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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the Neo-Malthusian dept.

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


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:31PM (21 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:31PM (#917489) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:44PM (7 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:44PM (#917501) Journal

    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".

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:43PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:43PM (#917590)

      The question is always "Which fewer people?" though. And the answer it always "Them".

      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)

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:48PM (#917598)

        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)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:18PM (#917617) Journal

          It is however a little more reasonable when "them" are having 2-3x as many kids as "us".

          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.

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          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:45PM (#917641)

            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

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:54PM (#917644) Journal

              Those who sit in their nice home country and work to undermine their own society, are a cancer.

              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

            by Immerman (3985) on Friday November 08 2019, @02:47PM (#917869)

            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

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @08:26PM (#918378)

            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)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:31PM (#917540)

    Population only reflects a high carbon footprint because our economies are structured to provide human needs with coal, oil, and natural gas

    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.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:42PM (7 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:42PM (#917543) Journal

      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

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:16PM (#917561)

        I could bribe my children with bacon long before I could bribe them with money...

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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:41PM (5 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:41PM (#917586) Journal

        meat consumption is one of those areas where individual choice is kind of the bad part.

        A solution. A genetically engineered meat product that has the texture and flavor of those meatless impossible burger meat substitutes!

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:00PM

          by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:00PM (#917606) Journal

          A solution. A genetically engineered meat product that has the texture and flavor of those meatless impossible burger meat substitutes!

          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)

          by Mykl (1112) on Friday November 08 2019, @03:24AM (#917715)

          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)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 08 2019, @04:28AM (#917752) Journal

            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).

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            • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:53PM

              by Immerman (3985) on Friday November 08 2019, @02:53PM (#917872)

              Methane, for example, has a greater impact on warming in the short term, but it remains in the atmosphere for only around a decade, whereas carbon dioxide persists and accumulates for centuries

              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

            by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @03:55PM (#917900) Journal

            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)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Friday November 08 2019, @03:14AM (#917708) Journal

    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)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday November 08 2019, @02:56PM (#917875)

      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)

        by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday November 09 2019, @02:20AM (#918133) Journal

        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

          by Immerman (3985) on Saturday November 09 2019, @05:33PM (#918328)

          Very true. And long past time if we want to live sustainably.