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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 pdfernhout on Friday November 08 2019, @01:28AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource [wikipedia.org]
"The overarching thesis on why there is no resource crisis is that as a particular resource becomes more scarce, its price rises. This price rise creates an incentive for people to discover more of the resource, ration and recycle it, and eventually, develop substitutes. The "ultimate resource" is not any particular physical object but the capacity for humans to invent and adapt. "
Full text: http://www.juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/ [juliansimon.org]
See also: https://overpopulationisamyth.com/ [overpopulationisamyth.com]
"Overpopulation is a myth. This myth has caused human rights abuses around the world, forced population control, denied medicines to the poor, and targeted attacks on ethnic minorities and women."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:54PM (1 child)
Your JulianSimon reference is pre2000 and a lot of scientists had similar views at that time. 20 years latter those scientists are conceding, for the first time, that infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Monday November 11 2019, @01:43AM
And how are we supposed to get off the planet's surface into the oceans or the ice or into space without people to invent what we need to do that? Also, how are we going to get more efficient systems for living on Earth without people to invent (or promote) them? It is true that people consume resources and make places crowded -- but people also create resources and make places worth being in.
Humanity may be damaging parts of the planet's biosphere, but that has more to do with ideology and culture and related technological choices than absolute numbers. True, the Earth's resources are apparently finite given current science (i.e. ignoring potential infinities in some future physics like in "Bernie and the Putty" from The Universe Builders series). But, the Earth could support a hundred billion people eating a vegetarian diet and living in cities powered by fusion energy and relying on indoor agriculture and cradle-to-cradle designs -- all with much less environmental impact total than today's population.
People could invent that future if we wanted it enough. Instead, the "best and the brightest" are enticed to work in predatory finance and on anti-social media and on killer drones. That is a cultural failing -- not a problem caused by too many people.
The Earth could have a population of only seven million people and that group could still lay waste to the planet with modern technology for whatever crazy ideological reasons like through a nuclear war started over boundary conflicts and control of oil fields. (As in, my sig on the irony of tools of abundance like nuclear energy in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity like who controls depleting oil fields.)
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.