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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: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
The number of peoe getting pregnant for a welfare check is not worth worrying about. We should be fixing our other problems that lead those few people into making such a choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:26PM
Biosciences are not yet up to inventing a cure for stupid, and it'll likely get forbidden anyhow. Unthinking subjects are governments' most important asset.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @08:16AM
I think this statement, frequently said, is contradicted by evidence. We can't measure exact motivations, we can measure exact numbers. Here [statista.com] are US fertility rates by income. The numbers are quite disconcerting. Those earning less than $10,000 per year - which is to say people who are almost definitely exploiting welfare and other programs are having 50% more children than those earning more than $200k. And it's not a one-off stat - there is a practically linear inverse relationship between income and fertility.
And keep in mind due to the fact that 2 children = the equilibrium that having 50% more children does not mean having 50% more population, it results in an exponential difference. Imagine two groups. One has 2.1 children per generation, the other has 1.9. The 2.1 per generation group will trend towards an infinite population, the 1.9 group will trend towards extinction. So 50% is a very large difference. This is also why the rhetoric about 'peak population' is false. Indeed we'll see a peak population followed by a decline, but it will be relatively short lived. What we're going to see is the low fertility groups - secular, wealthier, more educated types - decline in population. And their decline is going to be rapid enough to make up for the increases in the population of the other groups - the religious, poor, lower education individuals. We'll reach a brief equilibrium and then the population will begin to increase - simply with new demographics of the latter group making up an ever larger chunk of the entire population.
Similarly I do not think it's logical to suggest that it's education or other positive correlating factors that are driving the lower fertility rates. Look to the past, as recently as the fifties, and such correlations completely collapse. I think the obvious explanation is, well.. obvious. A decent number of people, disproportionately made up of those with the collapsing population levels, have adopted some pretty peculiar cultural values: boys pretending to be girls is celebrated, having an active disinterest in those individuals is considered phobic, having sex with the same sex is celebrated, promiscuity (which entails STDs as well as extensive birth control) is considered liberation, flirting is practically sexual assault - making the first move may literally be, and thinking a girl looks hot is objectification and misogyny. I don't really understand how that came to be a part of any culture, but I don't think it's going to spread much - especially not to the groups that are actively growing. And really I don't think we even should want to spread it. It's change and because of that it's labeled progress. But not all change is progress. Are these views and values beneficial or harmful to a healthy society?