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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: 2) by RamiK on Friday November 08 2019, @01:07AM (2 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Friday November 08 2019, @01:07AM (#917671)

    entirely feasible. Well, except for the whole political thing, and population control, those are the hard problems.

    But you're picking and choosing human traits: The desire for an industrialized quality of life can't be separated from the competitive drive that's behind the political issues. To illustrate my point, say you're flat growing at around 2billion (putting aside how you ever got there), how do you keep nations from cheating by producing too much and not reporting or cooking up plagues to target their neighbors' population and crops? On the micro, you're at least going to have people bribing officials to look away from their factory's emissions. And with flat growth you're basically running with no consumerism or middle class so democracy is as fragile as it gets to the point you can't really call the resulting life style very western... I mean, you can't go about negative population growth peacefully like the EU's and Japan's through rent inflation and consumerism if you're aiming at flat growth... Right? You're stuck with the Russian and Chinese gulags and genocides. And those involve warfare and resources waste and, most of all, volatility.

    Overall, the Terminators got it right. The issue is human nature. I won't say I have a solution. But the suggestions I've heard are all fundamentally flawed.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 08 2019, @03:02AM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday November 08 2019, @03:02AM (#917703)

    how do you keep nations from cheating by producing too much and not reporting or cooking up plagues to target their neighbors' population and crops?

    Nuclear weapons, and the will to use them.

    you're at least going to have people bribing officials to look away from their factory's emissions

    Population's too high? Stuff like this sounds like feedstock for Soylent Green.

    with flat growth you're basically running with no consumerism or middle class so democracy is as fragile as it gets to the point you can't really call the resulting life style very western...

    Flat growth will turn current economic models on their head. We've idolized exponential growth for a century or three, and as a result of achieving it we have created an unsustainable situation. The death of growth, as radical as it must be, isn't in any way linked to the death of consumerism or the middle class, what it is the death of is return on investment and that means there will have to be new incentives to pry money out of the hands of the rich - inflation of prices is one way, although with electronically stored currency deflation of savings is another. True that the western lifestyle, with 5% running around living a luxury lifestyle on mom & dad's money is going to change, but if it's handled properly that could be a boost to the middle class, and consumerism is a choice - probably a pretty easy one with automated factories, transit, etc.

    You're stuck with the Russian and Chinese gulags and genocides.

    That is how it was handled in the past, without transparency and free global flow of information, goods, troops and munitions, etc. I'd like to think that high levels of transparency and rapid communication could go a long way to unseating the next Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot before they have a chance to challenge those historical lows...

    the suggestions I've heard are all fundamentally flawed.

    Keeping procreation a choice should be a cornerstone of human rights. Tax and social benefit structures that are still, today, clearly designed to encourage procreation, needed to be reversed 40 years ago. But, hey, it looks like the ERA amendment might finally pass after 98 years of trying, maybe Greta Thunberg can start some legislation to save the ecology that will roll around to fruition by 2100.

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    • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday November 08 2019, @01:40PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Friday November 08 2019, @01:40PM (#917849)

      Nuclear weapons, and the will to use them.

      The reason I brought up biological warfare is because it can be used without the victims knowing who did it. The smarter nations will even let the diseases hit some of their own cities. Then you'll have terrorists trying to get superstates to nuke each-other...

      Stuff like this sounds like feedstock for Soylent Green.

      Not sustainable. Look it up.

      new incentives to pry money out of the hands of the rich...

      Democracy depends on having enough individuals with sufficient value for the few powerful (wealthy industrialists... military families... whatever...) not to be able to treat the population like cattle. If the wealthy industrialists aren't there to counter-balance the military, there's no military-industrial complex and a fat 4million federal employees class to keep the power balance leaning towards some semblance of a democracy. It basically becomes a communist state with a Kremlin / 70s PRC / inner party regime that holds both military and industry in its hands and can just dispose of the people they don't like. And the quality of life tends to flatten out to just the bare essentials in those sorts of governments. Either way, not a western lifestyle.

      I'd like to think that high levels of transparency

      Between North Korea and the dozen or so Asian, African and Middle Eastern genocides that happened just this last 30 years, it's pretty clear no one is willing to intervene unless they have something to personally gain. And when aiming at flat growth, having others kill each other is already you gaining so I fail to see why they would.

      clearly designed to encourage procreation

      You should read up on how Europe and Russia got to negative population growth figures before assuming it's a simple matter of policy. France especially had some ridiculous child support programs that just couldn't get any growth. When social mobility slumps but quality of life stays western, people stop having kids since the market adjust to squeezing out their income to the point they can't support families without major changes to their way of life. And while it sounds like a great solution, a generations later you don't have enough manpower to maintain a flat growth, low emissions economy and you end up importing those goat herders I've mentioned earlier. And those guys don't understand what's so great about having a democracy or western lifestyle which brings us to contemporary Europe...

      Like I said, I haven't seen working, sustainable solutions. The EU came close. The American variations clearly sucks. The Japanese variation isn't managing their unemployment figures. The Chinese aren't even trying and are still stuck in the mind set that they'll be able to get some technological solution around the problem. Again, self-destruction all around.

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