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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: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:37PM (18 children)
Except you need a minimum level of prosperity and education to start the process.
Very few people choose to have seven kids, especially not desperately poor people. But kids are what happens when you have sex, and nobody anywhere is going to stop doing that, especially with their spouse.
So, you need to give people access to free birth control (since they're already struggling just to feed themselves and can't realistically be expected to pay for it themselves), and expose them to some aggressively marketed family-planning materials to introduce the idea that children are an expensive choice rather than an inevitability.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:55PM (9 children)
This seems to work, lately, in the developed nations, but it's about as reliable as the trends in hemline fashion - entirely based on the behavior of a couple of generations in an extremely dynamic point in human history. One can also point to the post WWII baby boom, the Vietnam war temporary pause in procreation in the US, etc.
Yes, Africa especially wants more access to birth control than they have, and each of a ten-thousand "free Norplant clinic" Land Rovers with teams of 3-4 clinicians giving local access to reliable birth control for 5 years after implantation would do more to reduce global warming and other problems of population pressure than the equivalent money spent on virtually any other carbon capture or replacement scheme presently known.
Present African population is ~1.2 Billion, if these roving clinics could provide an average of just 11 birth control injections per day, that's over 200 million women who can be free from the burden of unwanted children, at a cost of perhaps $2B per year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:44PM (5 children)
Heck, rapid population growth itself is a few generation trend - global population was relatively stable for most of human history.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:18PM (4 children)
Due to massive mortality rates from war, disease, natural disasters, localised famines etc. People had heaps of kids - most of them just died.
Given that we have improved life expectancy for all and hugely reduced infant mortality, the only way to keep the population stable now is to have less kids.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:26PM
Exactly
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:29PM (2 children)
We are dealing with the evolutionary results of that in the population boom of recent history. Humanity is still "hard coded" for that "struggle to survive" instinct, being able to breed again in less than a year after giving birth. Humanity is also "soft coded" for population increase, given that most cultures still push, at least subconsciously, for the same thing, whether as a self verification of one's status or something necessary to accomplish.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday November 09 2019, @12:16AM (1 child)
>Humanity is also "soft coded" for population increase
Are you sure about that? Pretty much every developed nation has negative population growth (ignoring immigration)
Aside from a few heavily Catholic countries (which present their own challenges), global population growth today is mostly all originating in the developing nations. And demographically, mostly from the poorest segment of the populations - those that lack the education and easy access to birth control that the rest of the global population enjoys.
Humans are biologically wired to reproduce, but in practice that mostly amounts to "we like sex", and when we can easily prevent pregnancy, population growth rapidly plummets to close to zero.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday November 09 2019, @11:13PM
You can't ignore immigration. If you eliminate immigration maybe most developed countries would have zero or negative population growth. However, it seems that those same countries work hard to prevent zero population growth for developing nations. The US in particular allows religious influence against birth control and abortion to color foreign aid, while virtually all developed nations pump money into the developing nations with the goal of fueling growth. There's money to be made there! As a result, populations boom, and emigration from developing nations to developed nations is a by product.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:05PM (2 children)
[Citation needed]
I doubt that, the gross of energy consumption is not in Africa. Trying to solve the problems there is like searching for the key under the street light when actually the key was lost in a dark alley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:32PM (1 child)
Just imagine the places where they'll tell you to go in return.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:52PM
They don't need me to tell them, they are already doing it [wikipedia.org]
E.g., between 2008 and 2016, their electrical power derived from renewables grew percentage-wise from 16.7% to 25.4%.
I'm more worried about telling the Trumpians to "go green", cause US renewable percentage of electrical power [wikipedia.org] seems to have stopped at around 17%; and that "beautiful clean coal" [bloomberg.com] already sounds like "go fuck yourself, don't disturb my reality bubble".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:08PM (3 children)
Nobody, except Snow.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snow on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:09PM (2 children)
Bad example. My wife is pregnant right now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by slinches on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:39PM (1 child)
Congrats. My wife just had our first a couple months ago.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday November 08 2019, @05:55PM
I pity the fool!
Seriously, though... the first few months are the worst. It gets so much better. Hang in there :)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:38PM (2 children)
Except you need a minimum level of prosperity and education to start the process.
Yes, a "Marshall Plan". Very successful in Europe and Japan
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:30PM (1 child)
Given the terrible education you appear to have received, we definitely need to improve schooling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:44PM
Yeah, and you're an internet schooled moron. Look at the birthrates
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:37PM
Some people stop doing that -- especially with their spouse. And then do it, but not with their spouse.
Or the order of events is different. They don't stop doing that, get caught, and that ends doing it with their spouse.
The cost of doing so is low compared to the total societal costs of not doing so. It makes good sense. Therefore this will never be done. Because if we gave out free birth control, do you realize that people might think that they could do, uh . . . that one thing, you know!
And kids would think they could do it too!
And no sex education either!
(Sarah Palin's daughter: Mooooooom! I'm pregnant again! Why does this keep happening to me?)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.