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From Bloomberg:
Forty years ago, scientists from 50 nations converged on Geneva to discuss what was then called the "CO2-climate problem." At the time, with reliance on fossil fuels having helped trigger the 1979 oil crisis, they predicted global warming would eventually become a major environmental challenge.
Now, four decades later, a larger group of scientists is sounding another, much more urgent alarm. More than 11,000 experts from around the world are calling for a critical addition to the main strategy of dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy: there needs to be far fewer humans on the planet.
[...] The scientists make specific calls for policymakers to quickly implement systemic change to energy, food, and economic policies. But they go one step further, into the politically fraught territory of population control. It "must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity," they write.
Others disagree, stating
Fewer people producing less in greenhouse-gas emissions could make some difference in the danger that climate change poses over time. But whether we end up with 9, 10, or 11 billion people in the coming decades, the world will still be pumping out increasingly risky amounts of climate pollution if we don't fundamentally fix the underlying energy, transportation, and food systems.
Critics blast a proposal to curb climate change by halting population growth
Journal Reference:
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw. World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency[$]. BioScience. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:19PM (37 children)
I saw an infographic somewhere that said the biggest contributors to anthropogenic climate change were:
Is this mostly right? Seems like arguing which things are contributing to climate change might move things along a little more quickly than arguing whether climate change is happening at all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:31PM (21 children)
Human population is kind of a dishonest metric. If allmost all heavy industry and infrastructure power was run on renewables, and almost all transit was mass or walking, and we somehow stopped using concrete (a hard one), the carbon per capita is close to nil.
Population only reflects a high carbon footprint because our economies are structured to provide human needs with coal, oil, and natural gas.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:44PM (7 children)
It *is* dishonest, but less so than you think. Pick your uniform technological level, and the world cannot sustainably support the number of people currently living on it. This even works for old stone age technologies.
The question is always "Which fewer people?" though. And the answer it always "Them".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:43PM (6 children)
Indeed. That is, I think, the real problem with this proposal. When we start talking about who should be having fewer children the vast majority of people will almost inevitably say "those other people over there". And the eugenics arguments won't be all that far behind. Mark my words.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:48PM (5 children)
It is however a little more reasonable when "them" are having 2-3x as many kids as "us". Nothing wrong with holding everyone to the same standard.
It's when you want "them" to cut down while "us" continue to proliferate that eugenics starts to raise its head.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:18PM (4 children)
No, it is not always reasonable. E.g. if your fat ass is already pampered at the same environmental cost as 50 kids in the wild tribes in Amazonian jungle, the net benefit for the environment would be to "eugenize" you and let them live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)
Those who go to Amazonia to help people there, deserve admiration. Those who sit in their nice home country and work to undermine their own society, are a cancer.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:54PM
The straws that you used for that man you tried building, they are already rotten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:47PM
That's a very reasonable argument on the face of it, but think about it for a few minutes.
Are the grandkids of those low-impact Amazonian kids going to be living a similarly low-impact lifestyle? Or are they going to be advancing toward a high-impact Western lifestyle just as fast as their economic opportunities allow?
Trends pretty much everywhere point to the latter, which means that on a century-long timescale the population growth from those low-impact kids are almost as big of a problem as the high-impact ones. And fighting climate change is going to be a multi-century endeavor.
Furthermore, kids are *expensive* - Helping ensure that the poorest people have access to and awareness of birth control puts them in a position to pull themselves out of poverty much more easily.
I don't approve of cramming this down anyone's throat - there's some ugly history of that such as the covert sterilization of women in Africa under the guise of vaccination - that's atrocious, even ignoring the damage it does to real vaccination efforts.
However, making sure the poorest people have the same family planning options and awareness as wealthy Westerners? That benefits everyone.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @08:26PM
If they didn't keep having so many children over so many generations they would have more natural resources available to them per capita and they wouldn't have such a low standard of living. The fact that they kept on increasing their population density is why they have to distribute their resources across more people and hence they have fewer resources per capita. They did it to themselves, why should the people that don't want to have so many children have to sacrifice what they have to give to those that keep on having more and more children with no restraint. If you have many children and your population density is already high you should expect the standard of living per capita to go down, don't blame that on those that chose not to reduce their natural resources per capita by not having so many children.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:31PM (8 children)
You're forgetting: methane from beef production. Not only do you want us to walk everywhere and live in mud huts without concrete (or air conditioning), you're also asking us to grow our own vegetarian diet without the assistance of power farming equipment... no chance in hell you're getting elected, anywhere.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:42PM (7 children)
Yeah, okay, meat consumption is one of those areas where individual choice is kind of the bad part.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:16PM
I could bribe my children with bacon long before I could bribe them with money...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:41PM (5 children)
A solution. A genetically engineered meat product that has the texture and flavor of those meatless impossible burger meat substitutes!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:00PM
If we're willing to do genetic tinkering, why not ruminant bacteria that don't produce Methane instead? Cows and goats are a fantastic way to utilize land otherwise not suited for agriculture, improving the land's fertility, and they can be carbon negative with proper management.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday November 08 2019, @03:24AM (3 children)
They're already well on their way to growing beef in a petri-dish. It has all of the properties of 'real' beef, but none of the Methane emission that comes with a cow's stomach. No live animals involved either, so ethically it should be fine for vegans!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 08 2019, @04:28AM (1 child)
Some vegans would not touch it because it can be difficult to return to meat after not having had it for a long time. As in they don't like the taste. There could also be an argument made for the unhealthiness of meat, although there is a big difference between say, beef and chicken. Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat, and other plant-based substitutes will argue that they don't cause cancer and heart disease like red meat does. Stuff like fetal bovine serum was used in producing the first lab-grown burger, so that step has to be eliminated/replicated by other means to remove an ick factor. Maybe that has already happened.
As for lab-grown meat's environmental chops, it is also supposed to use much less water, land, and energy than traditional meat. You could put a lab-grown meat factory close to a major city, reducing supply chain transportation costs. With enough rooftop solar, maybe you could make it entirely carbon neutral (if you raise methane, you have to contend with this argument [technologyreview.com], which is probably a premature attention grab, but still).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:53PM
I'm trying to figure out if they have a legitimate gripe that's not expressed well, or if they're just spouting BS. What do they think happens to the methane after "only a decade"? It doesn't vanish or get ecologically absorbed - it breaks down into atmospheric CO2.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday November 08 2019, @03:55PM
From my perspective the lab meat is not a smaller environmental impact than cows raised on grass. I'll hold the carbon footprint of that cow up against the same volume of lab meat any day.
DMEM/F-12, the culture medium, is a soup of amino acids, sugars, salt, and antibiotics. It requires a huge amount of energy and chemical input to make, far more than a cow raised on grass.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday November 08 2019, @03:14AM (3 children)
Carbon isn't the only issue, there is also shit and piss. That goes somewhere. Usually into the oceans, rivers, and lakes.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:56PM (2 children)
Not if you treat it properly. What do you think dirt and plants are made of? (Well, besides water and CO2)
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 09 2019, @02:20AM (1 child)
It is commonly mixed with household cleaners, random sludge, heavy metals, medications -- you are going to have to have separate sewage systems, one for fertilizer and one for toxins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday November 09 2019, @05:33PM
Very true. And long past time if we want to live sustainably.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:46PM
An adult human emits about half a tonne of CO₂ per year just by being alive. Multiplied by ~8 billion humans and you get about ~4 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. Emissions from burning fossil fuels is currently about ten times that, around 40 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year.
So human breathing represents about ~10% compared to fossil fuel emissions, which is actually a pretty significant fraction. However there is a big difference: emission from animal metabolism in general should not contribute to an increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, because that carbon generally comes (directly or indirectly) from the atmosphere via photosynthesizing plants.
The thing about fossil fuels is that carbon came from the atmosphere over the span of millions of years, and we are putting it all back over the span of a few centuries. Given time, it'll go back into the ground eventually, but our species might go extinct first.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:01PM (4 children)
Just a tiny bit of logical reduction and you come back to human population as the primary driver of climate change.
Changing human behavior is... tricky at best, convincing people to not eat meat or travel is one of those things that people fly to global conferences and discuss over a nice steak dinner.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:12PM (3 children)
Greta Thunberg doesn't fly [foxnews.com], it seems.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:21PM (1 child)
She's a child, and has nothing else to do for the three weeks it takes to sail across the Atlantic. Also, if you do a net carbon expenditure analysis of what her trip cost the planet, it isn't all that great as compared to a jet - there's the crew of the sailing ship you have to feed for 3 weeks, along with the passengers. Rope and sails ain't cheap, and they cost that money because they require energy to make, maintain, and dispose of. A sailing ship which can carry as many passengers as a 767 would be huge, in today's world you'd likely need a fleet of 20+ normal sailing ships to carry that many passengers, and the crew to passenger ratio is sky high on the ships.
Still, I applaud her statement, and wish that more people would follow suit and change their behavior in meaningful ways before going to the conference table to discuss what can be done.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:16AM
Personally I think we could do completely without people who actually make things worse just so they can show off much they care.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday November 08 2019, @08:46AM
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/crew-of-five-are-flying-to-new-york-to-bring-gretas-boat-back/ [wordpress.com]
Greta is a symbol, ineffable ideology for the new lefty generation which risked to be swayed by memes and chans. This is why they are allowed to skip one day of propaganda sessions AKA school a week. This is why it's more important for her to show up after a sea trip than actually saving some CO2 and having her attend by teleconference. HELLO THIS IS THE 2020 WE CAN MANAGE SOME VIDEO ACROSS THE GLOBE AT ACCEPTABLE SPEED.
It was too easy for commenters here to call her followers gretini, which is a bit unfair (a pun on cretini, morons), but doesn't miss much the mark.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:29PM (4 children)
No, it ignores the beavers that are melting the permafrost via building dams and releasing GHGs into the atmosphere at a massive scale. It is predicted they will soon outpace humans in emissions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 08 2019, @03:59AM (3 children)
So you say, so it must be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @10:44AM (2 children)
Beavers can release up to 2x the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/climate/arctic-beavers-alaska.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 08 2019, @02:51PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @05:29PM
Who is going to stop them? The IPCC is silent on this issue. The governments of the world must act in unison to prevent the beavers from melting the permafrost.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 08 2019, @03:41AM
Sure, though it's unproductive to have some ignorant person tell us those activities aren't really important. /you also have the matter of the alleged harm from climate change.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 08 2019, @09:23AM
We had an article here a few years back about the seven biggest cargo ships having the same impact of every vehicle in America combined.
Buy American, save the environment.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday November 08 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)
> I saw an infographic somewhere that said the biggest contributors to anthropogenic climate change were:
does the infographic use that very same words?
the anthropogenic climate change is caused by men by definition of the word anthropogenic. The infographic lists CO2 emissions, and methane emissions, good. It doesn't list HAARP and other experiments, bad. It doesn't compare men activity with natural emissions, by definition. Of course it is the straw that breaks the camel's back so ideally we should keep our interference with the natural cycles as traditional as possible (that is, luddites were right) but let's not call a straw a plank, it's dishonest.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday November 09 2019, @05:45PM
>It doesn't compare men activity with natural emissions,
Allow me - burning fossil fuels produced about 40 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2015. Natural emissions pretty much means volcanoes, which produce less than 1 billion tons of CO2 per year.
Of course that's fossil carbon, but fossil carbon is what disrupts the balance, ecological carbon cycles pretty stably between CO2, the plants that combine it with solar energy to make cellulose and sugars, and the animals and microbes that eat the plants to convert it back into CO2 and energy. There's only a net change in ecological CO2 emissions when something disrupts the balance - if forests spread, more CO2 gets sequestered as biomass. When forests are cleared, that biomass is converted back into CO2. In recent centuries we can lay most of those changes directly at the feet of human civilization.