My instinct is that you’re right, but I wonder if what we’re really saying is that earth’s population is too large under the currently dominant socioeconomic and lifestyle constructs.
It’s clearly the current lifestyle. Africans are destroying the world much less than the industrialized world because they’re too poor to live the climate-wrecking lifestyle of the West.
A key issue though is that it takes a while for lifestyles to change. The higher the population, the quicker the switch needs to be done to avoid catastrophic consequences.
If the Earth’s population were 100 million, it might be fine to take a century to switch away from fossil fuels. But at nearly 10 billion, if it takes a century, the results will be catastrophic.
I mean, yes but also no. There’s just way too many people, period. Merely 60 years ago the human population was sitting around 3 billion people. Now it’s 8. Earth’s resources are finite, and at this rate of growth I would not be surprised if we ran out of non-renewables (with no renewable alternatives that scale as well as non-renewables) in our lifetime or our children’s.
Sorry but this is a good thing. Earths population is too large for the resources available.
My instinct is that you’re right, but I wonder if what we’re really saying is that earth’s population is too large under the currently dominant socioeconomic and lifestyle constructs.
It’s clearly the current lifestyle. Africans are destroying the world much less than the industrialized world because they’re too poor to live the climate-wrecking lifestyle of the West.
A key issue though is that it takes a while for lifestyles to change. The higher the population, the quicker the switch needs to be done to avoid catastrophic consequences.
If the Earth’s population were 100 million, it might be fine to take a century to switch away from fossil fuels. But at nearly 10 billion, if it takes a century, the results will be catastrophic.
In the end, that’s more or less the same thing. But the question is, do we need more people? It’s also easier to be sustainable if we require less.
I mean, yes but also no. There’s just way too many people, period. Merely 60 years ago the human population was sitting around 3 billion people. Now it’s 8. Earth’s resources are finite, and at this rate of growth I would not be surprised if we ran out of non-renewables (with no renewable alternatives that scale as well as non-renewables) in our lifetime or our children’s.
How do you know this?
The esteemed Mr. Malthus wrote about it. The admirable J. Swift has also written a wonderful proposal for how we may deal with it.
Lots of ecofascist Maltusianism in this thread. Not surprising since the
migration has happened.