Earth can no longer sustain the global human population, ‘sustainable population’ is around 2.5 billion people, study warns
Posted by Portalrules123@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 426 comments
pianoblook@reddit
Oh we could easily sustain all the people. We just can't also sustain the existence of billionaires and the global cancer that is late-stage capitalism.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
Not at a lifestyle anyone wants. It’s not just billionaires. It’s anyone that doesn’t want to live like a 3rd world peasant.
Lambdastone9@reddit
All those third world countries were doing fine until the first world ones bombed, colonized, and corrupted them.
It’s certainly seems like a small group of have-alls are the one creating most of the have-nots
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
No, we fucking won’t.
I don’t call not living on a fucking mudhut “corruption.” We did a lot of shitty things, but learning to live with a modicum of comfort, not drink of diseases, not having to work 18 hour days, that’s not one of them.
zb0t1@reddit
JFC at least spend the next month deconstructing the clear gap in knowledge you display here regarding civilization, history etc.
Do you have any clue how the world was before western imperialists decided to look at Earth and think it was all theirs?
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
Do you have any idea what the global population was at the time?
You are the one that lacks knowledge. But whatever, it’s all us white people’s fault.
Lambdastone9@reddit
The world has a massive amount more resource extraction per capita now than it does back then
The old world wasn’t people just living in abundance of supplies because they had to share less, they were much worse off than us now because there were less people and worse technology to get resources way back then.
No one said anything about white people either, you’re the first to point that finger. Race is as real as astrology, it was just a tool to divide, disrupt, and direct a populace, away from the have-all’s affairs so they could rig system and loot pockets in peace.
The vast majority of white people aren’t even a pawn in the grand scheme first world lootings, you gotta stop eating up that ragebait slop callin y’all colonizers. Most of you guys were closer to peasants and serfs, than you were to even merchants or craftsmen, forget being an officer or even nobility.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
We all know what you mean when you say colonialism. You’re not talking about the Umayyad Caliphate.
We extract more resources per capita because we can! We have the technology to take more, so we do! That isn’t colonialism, it’s human nature.
Lambdastone9@reddit
Why are you acting like colonialism is only bad when it’s white people, no one likes being plundered from their own resources, doesn’t matter who’s doing it, it’s always a scourge.
Resource extraction isn’t colonialism, taking another country’s resources through corruption and violence is. That’s how the have-all’s get to have all:by stealing it from others.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
Im saying when people are complaining about colonialism, they are complaining about European colonialism.
Lambdastone9@reddit
I’m not, no one but you in this thread is, that’s literally the association you hold with the word, likely cause you consume anti-white ragebait and pseudo-intellectualism about how all of yall are colonizers.
This was a thread about how the current projected global populations are sustainable, so long as barons and billionaires don’t horde and rig everything at our expense. Get rid of the <0.1% that take up everything, and the world will be fine.
You were the one that associated a loss of billionaires and barons as an attack on first world western life. you were the one that associated colonizers with whiteness. You’re the one acting like colonialism and unnatural wealth are unique to just white people, and taking that away somehow deprives you of some pillar of white livelihood.
You aren’t part of their club, your lineage probably never was, and your descendants likely never will be. Those are a group of people with enough power, and lack of humanity, to steal from the vulnerable in mass droves. you gain just about nothing from their prosperity despite being white, and we all pay an expense for their antics—some far more than others.
We’re talking about getting rid of parasites, and your brain rotted ears are hearing “blame the whites”
Lambdastone9@reddit
I mean you’re just stupid or racist if you think mud huts is all 3rd world people can come up with.
Do you think colonists stepped onto dirt poor countries for fun? They went to places with wealth, derived from the land, and then funneled that land’s wealth into the west through violence.
Mudhuts are accessible, which is great if you’re living in an economy whose resources are being pillaged away to a whole other economy, better than sleeping outside. No one lives in mudhuts unless they’re deprived of resources.
howdocomputerdo@reddit
I'll take living like a peasant over starvation 🤷♂️
B4SSF4C3@reddit
Good news. You’ll get both.
pkkthetigerr@reddit
Go see how people live in india ir china at low income and you'll change your mind.
Worked to the bone with no escape and no choice to take a break because then you will starve. Living with 7-8 other people in a room thats 80 sq feet, in systems built to keep you poor.
howdocomputerdo@reddit
How much of that do you think is due to the current system needing constant expansion to not self destruct?
i_am_a_shoe@reddit
Does this mean I get land in which to grow my beets?
OffToTheLizard@reddit
Yes, subsistence farming has been around for all of human civilization. You just have to not get colonized.
almodsz@reddit
Subsistence farming is not a realistic proposal when it comes to feeding eight billion human beings.
OffToTheLizard@reddit
Laws of Limited Competition don't stop when you cheat the system.
I hate this entire subject because it's so easily incorporated into an eco fascist objective. You just watch how these people will expect "land" to subsist in a world they are privileged for. This entire subject is fucked because the ultimate number left living will be zero.
zb0t1@reddit
Not colonized, genocides, ecocided and having your entire history erased too.
Imperialism and colonialism is when everything went downhill.
spacerocks08@reddit
What’s the difference?
arthurthomasrey@reddit
Sign me up, please.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
And I’ll choose death.
erevos33@reddit
Bullshit. The amount of wasted energy, food , space and materials that we just waste is absurd. We actually throw stuff out to keep prices high. And above all, our adherence to capitalism is killing us.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
People like you forget we are one species out of millions, but insist we get all the resources.
We have too many people. You are just brainwashed.
erevos33@reddit
Living in balance with nature never crossed your mind huh? I never mentioned hoarding resources , i said the opposite.
almodsz@reddit
Living in balance with nature does not work with eight billion people. We can either pursue a controlled population decline through a coordinated program of radical austerity on an unprecedented scale, or leave it to mother nature. Mother nature will go about it in a messier way, though.
JMaster098@reddit
First of all, if we were living more within our needs as human beings and not within what's most likely to sell on a market we could absolutely sustain 8 billion people. But because number must go up so billionaires can keep themselves fat and powerful, we cannot sustain 8 billion with our current rate of production, consumption, and waste.
Second of all, we are only at an unsustainable 8 billion because a lot of people are not given the means of natural population control due to poverty. It is a simple fact that poverty creates a higher population growth, it is also a simple fact that once people are removed from poverty population growth decreases due to elevated material conditions.
Since you lot seem to care so much about sustainable populations, maybe campaign for dealing with capitalism and its inherent problems like wealth inequality and enforced poverty. Objectively speaking that is the best starting point to have if you are serious about addressing this issue and not just a privileged, depressed misanthrope.
almodsz@reddit
Wrong. We can't even sustainably feed eight billion people. It's not billionaires who are single-handedly eating the oceans barren. We use over 70% of the planet’s ice-free land, about a quarter of which has been degraded, primarily for agriculture. And crucially, this obscene land use occurs despite our maximally efficient industrial agriculture powered by fossil fuels. We're talking optimized to such a degree that food waste, despite its scale, is one of our lesser problems. Habitat loss, the primary driver of biodiversity collapse, is largely an agriculture story.
erevos33@reddit
The only reason you think it does not work is because the amount if resources we waste and the amount used up by the affluent class is so absurd its almost incomprehensible. There is plenty to go around, if we dont throw it out or hoard it.
almodsz@reddit
What we need is a coordinated program of radical austerity. This would entail forced urbanization into high-density megacities to minimize land use, nearly eliminating private consumption, enforcing a one-child policy worldwide, and providing subsistence-level nutrition based on low-impact food sources, such as algae or insect protein. We'd have to sustain that over several decades, until population drops by at least half. It would obviously be terrible, but it beats the alternative. I wouldn't call that "plenty to go around", though.
erevos33@reddit
No. Fuck no. We need the opposite. Urbanisation is what destroys the planet and you want more of it? Then yeah, if you want that, you cant sustain shit. Good luck.
lapidls@reddit
You don't know what you are talking about lmao you can only have sustainable living in cities. Google about impact of small density living on resource allocation
almodsz@reddit
High-density megacities to minimize land use would actually be less urbanisation.
trickortreat89@reddit
Or at least less suburbia
ishmetot@reddit
The study is literally taking all of that into account and saying the sustainable population is 2.5 billion in the best case scenario. It's even lower if we were to continue down the current trajectory.
“Our calculations show a sustainable global population closer to about 2.5 billion people if everyone were to live within ecological limits and comfortable, economically secure living standards.”
John_Jack_Reed@reddit
Oh stop crying you'll be fine without your superyacht
mem2100@reddit
Superyacht? No. The top 1% richest people produce 15% of global emissions - about 75 tons each. Get rid of 'em - or at least all of their toys and you haven't made things much different.
The next 9%, produce 34%, about 25 tons/per. If we get rid of the top 10%'s lifestyle - that cuts total emissions in about half.
What they call the "middle 40%", from 10th to 50th percentile, produce 43% - about average at 5 tons/per. So in the top half, we produce 92% of the emissions.
The bottom 50% produces 8% of all emissions, a bit under 1 ton each.
I'm thinking that living like the average person in the bottom 50% would be quite an adjustment. Getting the rich/upper middle class to live like the middle 40% at 5 tons/per - helps but doesn't really get us there.
JMaster098@reddit
100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global emissions. Now who owns these companies?
J-A-S-08@reddit
Have you actually read that article and not just that headline?
ericvulgaris@reddit
Exactly this. It isn't population figure that's the problem. It's the living style of half the world.
mem2100@reddit
Do you know about what your annual carbon footprint is?
ericvulgaris@reddit
Yes. I'm like the average 1%'s emissions. Do you know yours?
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
It’s not a fucking superyacht. It’s a comfortable home, reliable transportation, electricity, ample food, and so on. We don’t produce enough to support this many people and leave enough resources for plants and animals.
To make enough food, we have to have massive monocultures fed by excessive (and petroleum based) fertilizers. To make electricity, we produce carbon spewing gas turbines (and no, renewables are not keeping pace). That’s to say nothing of plastics, clear cutting forests for meat, and so on.
Yes, billions use way too much. But to have 8 billion people, so do most of us.
ThirdFloorNorth@reddit
You've fallen into some eco-fascist pitfalls, sadly. Not saying you, yourself, are eco-fascist, but this sounds like stuff they spout and unfortunately it takes root.
We can easily support the current population at a comfortable level. The problem is resource allocation, that is to say, capitalism.
Food can be grown local in many places, and even with industrial-scale farming, monocultures with excessive fertilizer use do not have to be the norm. Right now they are because monoculture = simple profit margin, and the fertilizer is because we have abused the hell out of our soil. With the right changes to farming practices, the soil can and will heal.
Electricity, we can produce more than enough without carbon, again with the right changes and priorities.
The 2.5 billion people crap is a straight-up eco-fascist talking point. One of the authors of this study is... well-known, shall we say, for his histrionic, pessimistic views and tendency to read results in the more negative light.
No, we can't sustain the current population as is... under capitalism. That's the crux. Some people will read that and go "shit, we gotta get rid of a bunch of people," the others "shit, we've gotta move past capitalism."
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
Must avoid the conversation by calling it eco- fascism. Hell no.
Seriously “all we need to do is pave the desert with solar panels?” Where do we get the materials to make all that. And fucking “orbital energy collection” - just pull magic technology that doesn’t exist out of our ass why not.
And, sorry, I hate capitalism, but it isn’t magically disappearing because it’s bad. That is some pie in the sky hopium.
ThirdFloorNorth@reddit
Well it sounds like you've given up on us actually having a future where billions of humans aren't required to die.
If that's the case, far be it from me to try to convince you otherwise, but I don't think we really have anything in common to talk about.
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mapofcanada@reddit
> Right now they are because monoculture = simple profit margin, and the fertilizer is because we have abused the hell out of our soil
There is no political system / alternative to capitalism that can erase the energy cost of farming. Monoculture / fertilizer based farming is not just simple profit margin optimization, it's cost optimization and energy (fuels, fertilizer, labor) are all costs.
Polyculture, horticultural, organic, microplot farming are great ideas in theory, but they cost a lot lot lot lot more energy, especially labor.
almodsz@reddit
Our biosphere cannot. It's not billionaires who are single-handedly eating all the fish in the oceans. We use over 70% of the planet’s ice-free land, about a quarter of which has been degraded, primarily for agriculture. That is, highly optimized, industrialized agriculture fueled by fossil fuels. And we're talking optimized to such a degree that food waste, despite its scale, is the lesser of our problems. Habitat loss, one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, does not require capitalism as its precondition.
zb0t1@reddit
Oof thank you for being here, I was starting to lose faith in this community.
How people take the bait so easily whenever facists use their typical demagogy is infuriating.
lapidls@reddit
The #1 reason for unsustainability agriculture is meat. It's not just capitalism
lapidls@reddit
Lemme guess by comfortable home, reliable transportation and ample food you mean single family house, car and meat. A superyacht is less wasteful than this
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
Yes, a super yacht is less wasteful than eating meat and having a car.
You are an idiot.
Humans have eaten meat for millennia. It is likely it provided us the nutrition needed to rise above other primates, to be able to feed our calorie-needy brains. But nope, having 10 billion people is more important.
Take my home and what I enjoy eating, and I’d rather you just shoot me.
Ok_Work_743@reddit
The Appeal to Nature isn't particularly convincing when humans have & are (at this very moment) sustaining themselves on a frugivorous diet, especially with nutritional supplementation nowadays.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
It’s not a fucking superyacht. It’s a comfortable home, reliable transportation, electricity, ample food, and so on. We don’t produce enough to support this many people and leave enough resources for plants and animals.
To make enough food, we have to have massive monocultures fed by excessive (and petroleum based) fertilizers. To make electricity, we produce carbon spewing gas turbines (and no, renewables are not keeping pace). That’s to say nothing of plastics, clear cutting forests for meat, and so on.
Yes, billions use way too much. But to have 8 billion people, so do most of us.
fragileirl@reddit
Billionaires have sold you this lifestyle, and the promise of an even better one, at the expense of the planet and all the other people that get paid slave wages to ensure you have the cushy consumerist life you currently live. I am fine with sacrificing new fast fashion drops every season and amazon prime so that the planet can thrive and also so that sweatshop workers can live a more comfortable life.
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
It’s not billionaires. I hate them. It is more than consumerism and fast fashion. We have more than 4 times the population than we had 100 years ago. How is that not a problem?
fragileirl@reddit
The population is not a problem because those are living breathing human beings. The problem is the allocation of resources and the billionaires convincing the rest of us that need must consume, that we keep driving demand so their numbers are pumped up and they have an excuse to upscale their companies and siphon even more of the planets resources to make junk. AI is a perfect example. No one wanted or needed this. They just decided it would be a new money making venture and now it is a new expense for people and businesses and it is a new drain on the earth.
We can live, build, and consume more sustainably, they are just choosing not to.
JMaster098@reddit
Careful now, you're making too much sense.
wakeupwill@reddit
It's perfectly possible to live a pleasant, comfortable lifestyle with all the necessary amenities that support a modern person without overconsumption.
We simply need to produce within our means and create goods that don't break down due to planned obsolescence, fast fashion, etc.
Degrowth is necessary for our survival.
BigHeadDeadass@reddit
Uh no it's billionaires. Them and industrial complexes like the military
TheSuperTest@reddit
3rd world peasants lifestyle lol, fuck offffffffff you're dumb af
I felt like a "3rd world" peasant today when I was counting out nickels and dimes for two boxes of mac n cheese and hotdogs so my son had a meal for tonight and tomorrow night. I have a 4 year degree, I own a home, I am a union worker, so is my husband, and we both make ALOT of money, more then you will ever in your life. Yet we are STILL struggling to make ends meet because everything is so unaffordable for the sole purpose of lining billionaire classes pockets. People like you, people who are willfully blocking progress are the enemy, and will be treated as such. Fuck off
onedyedbread@reddit
The problem is that even a steady state would be a disaster for our current economic model. Once growth hits a hard limit - and it will - the current living arrangements collapse immediately (in reality the streses will likely lead to a fupture long before the "hard" limit is reached). We're on an overshoot trajectory we cannot stop without major, unprecedented global, cooperative and managed restructuring of the way we "do business"; with each other, and even more importantly, the living world around us.
The question is not "will we eat the rich?", although I'm all for it. The question is rather if we're actually capable of a level of social organization we haven't nearly reached yet. If we are able to truly realize, as a species and global society, but also individually, that we have to urgently cut back and start to live within our means. And if we can do that quickly enough to stop a global unraveling that has already started. Which would necessarily entail the most consequential economic transformation this world has ever seen. On a planet with some 200 imagined "nations" and thousands of very real nukes.
EnlightenedSinTryst@reddit
Good link, I like the alternative titles. “Calm Down and Get to Work” is my favorite.
Federal_Rope1590@reddit
8 billion humans is only possible through the Haber-Bosch process involving natural gas. Natural gas is finite. And warming the planet. There is no alternative for this. Before that there was guano. That was all industrial society could leverage to feed people beyond 1 billion people. There never will be a sustainable alternative to Haber Bosch. None of this is remotely sustainable. Even if miraculous nuclear fusion comes along the chemical process of creating nitrogen fertilizers at a scale needed to feed 8 billion people will need hydrocarbons, that even if created renewably, will keep warming the planet.
“Peak Everything” is the phenomenon where dozens of resources (including natural gas) critical to sustaining 8 billion people are being destroyed beyond replacement. A lot of nuclear fuels are finite themselves.
I share the leftist sentiments espoused here but capitalism and the elite are not a boogeyman collapse can be pinned on. We are all complicit. It is a natural phenomenon arising from overshoot. And it is what allowed single-cellular organisms to proliferate across the planet in the first place. There are these ebbs and flows of energy and material availability and complexity. There is solace in the fact that our technological civilization arises from these natural principles and that its collapse and our extinction contributes to the evolving natural order over millions of years.
I think this sub has been infiltrated a lot in recent years by the rest of Reddit. Sustainability issues do not ultimately begin or end with capitalism or the elite. There is not boogeyman and as living beings we all bear some complicity. Overshoot is an ecological phenomenon.
In prior years the vast majority of people on this sub were well aware of the resource constraints limiting the long-term global population below 2 billion.
You can still imagine a smaller scale technologically advanced civilization of 1-2 billion people carrying on for a couple centuries, millennia, or beyond but we’ve exhausted certain resources accumulated in the soil over hundreds of millions of years beyond replacement.
Barnacle_B0b@reddit
Yeaaaah, no.
That accusation falls apart immediately because the opulently wealthy almost directly dictate the written law by lobbying and campaigning politicians.
We don't have any choice but to be complicit in a system they coerced us all into.
JorgasBorgas@reddit
There is something called the maximum power principle, which specifically applied to ecology means that ecological systems tend to develop to use all the energy available in a system. In other words, in the grand scheme of things, organisms don't "save" resources or leave them unused, they harness them to the best of their ability.
The point is that no matter what, more exploitative systems prevail. It should also be obvious that egalitarian and progressive societies can still damage the environment. Tribal humans wiped out large mammals wherever they went to the point that ecosystems have still not recovered, hundreds of thousands of years later. It's trivial to imagine that today, individuals and social groups would push for continued resource exploitation in their own interests even if inequality was reduced. I mean that's literally what happens when people in the Global South hear that now, all of a sudden, we have to start with global degrowth, just as prosperity in those regions is increasing. Industrial society also enables gender and health equality.
The key point is that this would all still be true even in an alternate timeline where the industrial revolution was immediately followed by the global success of leftism. The egalitarian society would become addicted to cheap energy, and then you would see people defending continued resource exploitation with bad reasoning because the society as a whole requires it, which would still be incorrect even if society was not dominated by billionaires.
onedyedbread@reddit
This is ultimately a flavour of hard biological determinism which disgusts me, but it's also hard to argue against, unfortunately.
Can I imagine a world where humans cooperate on a global scale, act responsibly with regards to the fellow living, their descendants and deep time? Yeah, I can. If I believe in anything, it's that in theory, we do have the faculties to transcend biological imperatives. Rationality, empathy, a sense of community, the ability to predict outcomes and plan ahead; it's all there, just underdeveloped and myopic.
For the universe to be a good place, the possibility has to exist. But it sure does look like it was never really in the cards for us, though.
EnlightenedSinTryst@reddit
What if the universe is neutral?
DiscountExtra2376@reddit
Ironically I have suffered from ecological grief for years. I was constantly either really mad or really sad at our species. It wasn't until I just accepted this is a law of nature and we're no better than any other animal, that I was able to let go of the sad and mad feeling MOST of the time.
There are obviously individuals who try to counter these laws with veganism, anti consumption movements, thrifting only etc, but collectively they are just overshadowed by people just living like any other animal. I don't mean that as an insult. It's just they want to be left alone and allowed to consume however the hell they want without any thought. Unfortunately, there are grave consequences for that at our current population. Our overshoot is going to be corrected and it's going to be horrendous. It's the consequences of our own actions. We are smart enough to recognize what's in store, but too animalistic to stop it.
Federal_Rope1590@reddit
Ignore the downvotes brother you are speaking ecological truths that must be reckoned with
TheOldPug@reddit
Now you can point that humanity has overwhelmed its own water supply, and they're like EuGEnIcS!
Federal_Rope1590@reddit
I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with this because they believe it makes it more difficult to be a moral person. It shouldn’t. Medieval peasants still tried and succeeded to be moral people as the Black Death and mongol invasions and the pillaging knights crashed all around them.
It’s easy to point the finger at an elite cabal. But there has always been one in some form or another. Even if your village was a paradise, there were the Assyrian armies miles away that could come for you some day. Just because they are gone does not mean the end of history and the triumph of utopia.
You have to recognize the historical moment for what it actually is to have any historical agency. And we live in a historical moment of widespread decline of industrial civilization. And from acknowledging that we can begin to live our lives in a more moral direction.
phillipkdink@reddit
The Haber-Bosch process does not require natural gas, it can be done with water as a hydrogen source ffs
Federal_Rope1590@reddit
I really hope that’s the case and can be done at scale but you run into the issue of mechanization. It is unlikely mechanized agriculture can continue for centuries with industrial metals declining at the rate they are now.
The world before mechanized farming was pretty grim and most of us were farm laborers. On a geological time-scale it’s hard to imagine billions of people on this planet, I’m sorry.
To maintain global economic growth and energy transition, the world needs to mine as much copper in the next 20 years as was produced in the past 10,000 years. That’s really hard to fathom. And this applies to many of our resource curves. At the macro scale things just don’t look good on a centuries long time horizon for global industrial civilization. It’s very very likely to be a lot smaller 100 years from now. And 5 years ago these were all well-understood patterns across this sub. A lot of people now seem dangerously optimistic.
You can nitpick the data and point to such and such tech breakthrough at Stanford for fertilizer production or wherever but these basic patterns of resource consumption are unlikely to ever be sustainable.
Call me a doomer but I say all this as someone who works in wastewater treatment and has produced hundreds of truckloads of biosolids. I don’t really see people lining up to do that work.
Hukkaan@reddit
Where do the biosolids go in your country? Landfill? Here they are used for green spaces, not food production. But at least some use comes from them.
A lot of work is still needed to make recycled fertilizers cheaper than industrial fertilizers. Also they need to be safe to use. Lots of industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals end up in the biosolids.
B4SSF4C3@reddit
Biosolids = waste processed to be used as fertilizer.
AZORxAHAI@reddit
The Haber Bosch Process is also responsible for something like 1% of global carbon emissions. That's not an insignificant amount to be clear, but it is a far cry from the unsolvable disaster leading to inevitable collapse a lot of people in this comment section want to believe it is. That number can go way down simply by shifting the way we do it, and even if we don't, that amount is easily able to be offset in other ways. Speculative carbon negative technologies like BECCS are fake and unscalable at this point, but good old fashioned reforestation will still work just fine for crucial sectors like this.
Perhaps we cut some of the useless CO2 emissions like fast fashion or trim down aviation, but what you don't do is cut fertilizer production lmfao
TheWhalersOnTheMoon@reddit
Isn't the current proportion of "green" ammonia in the market negligible? At least based on google current production accounts for less than 0.2% (we can round up to 0.5% or 1% if we're feeling generous), and projected to potentially get up to about 15% of total production by 2030 (~30 million tons vs current total of ~200 million tons).
I do think it is a good technology though, don't get me wrong.
oldsecondhand@reddit
Hydrogen from electrolysis costs 2-3 times more than from natural gas.
DestroyTheMatrix_3@reddit
Let's use the most important molecule on earth as a fuel source.
What could go wrong?
AwayMix7947@reddit
Is water infinite, then?
phillipkdink@reddit
Are you for real
AwayMix7947@reddit
are you?
No-Candidate6257@reddit
Buddy, I'm not gonna know what to tell you... if you don't know how water works, look it up. Like, stuff like the water cycle is literally taught at elementary school. What's your excuse here?
AwayMix7947@reddit
so, are we gonna use every river, every lake and raindrop to use as hydrogen source for the Habor-bosch, to feed the still growing population?
You see what I'm getting at here?
Hukkaan@reddit
There is an alternative nitrogen source: us and animals. Currently we send our pee to wastewater treatment plants and to water systems. Urine and poo from animal farms is spread on same fields around the animal farms and not on plant farms that desperately need those resources. Nutrient cycles are completely broken. Combining those with nitrogen binding plants (beens and similar) is enough to mostly replace nitrogen from Hber-Bosch and mining of phosphorus. Some non-renewables would be still needed but not even close to the amounts we use currently.
B4SSF4C3@reddit
Biosolid fertilizers (ie human pee and poo passed through bacteria pools) are already in use. It’s not enough.
asigop@reddit
The upcoming fertilizer shortages are the reason I compost my shit. No fertilizer for me.
Traditional_Way1052@reddit
I mean, the Romans (maybe other societies, too) used urine to bleach clothing. Maybe if we pitch it as a return to tradition....
jus10beare@reddit
I think there's a future in mining waste of all kinds. I imagine a future with colossal bucket wheel excavators trudging their way through ancient landfills to process the rare metal and other scraps.
DesignerSubstance756@reddit
I’ve envisioned this exact same thing….so much waste and valuable resources go to landfills
samizdette@reddit
This is why the greatest legacy I hope to leave is to sort the recycling well, lmao.
May our successors find our refuse piles in a low entropy state (less mixed) where possible.
nubsuo@reddit
There are a few, but not many, farmers starting to use these methods. They are saving a lot of money and learning to be resilient, but the majority will suffer.
AwayMix7947@reddit
Theoretically, if every human on the planet devoted themselves to permaculture and agroforestry, the potential is superb.
But it ain't never gonna happen, and it's already way too late.
atatassault47@reddit
We need to figure out how to, at scale, remove CO2 from the atmosphere anyway, as we are likely already past the point of no return wihout doing so. Once that is possible we can simply recycle hydricarbons as much as we need.
ericvulgaris@reddit
Just to clarify -- 8 billion humans is sustainable but it requires a drastic drop in quality of living. We will all simply be substance farmers living in basically tents without electricity eating peas, pulses, lentils, and grains.
There is enough arable land for everyone if we give up eating meat. That marginal arable land is plenty enough to grow to survive on. But only that. Which to probably most people in the developed world would choose death over lol.
No-Candidate6257@reddit
We can double the population and increase our level of industrialization and standards of living in a sustainable way.
This is just unscientific nonsense.
The fundamental problem is capitalism and a lack of environmental regulations.
ericvulgaris@reddit
No we absolutely can't. You clearly don't have any understanding of materials science and engineering. We don't even have enough sand for concrete for today. Let alone copper. Sustainable? Do you have any clue how mining works? Capitalism is bad but you're ignoring the realism of global boundaries.
No-Candidate6257@reddit
lol
Yes, they are boogeymen and yes all our major problems can be blamed on capitalism.
I'm not even gonna get into your scientifically false claims about fertilizer.
theguyfromgermany@reddit
While I agree with almost everything you say, the way the top 1% behaves IS a large problem. From the 6 billion population we are above budget ~ 2 billion could be replaced by some very basic austerity rules for the elite.
We will always have rich, but private jets, helicopters for everyday travel, Luxus jachts, 5 swimming pools etc etc are not required even for the richest people.
And if one third of the problem is solveable with putting some ground rules for the elite, we should absolutely make that a part of the solution, and a topic to talk about.
AwayMix7947@reddit
Excellent.
I, too, think many newcomers in this sub fail to shift their perspective to an ecology-based worlview. Like the the parent comment with 400 upvotes.. I mean what the hell.
SmilingAmericaAmazon@reddit
Tell me you are not a chemist without telling me ....
almodsz@reddit
[Citation needed]
pianoblook@reddit
Fair enough, sources are important. There may be a more recent study, but here's a good one from 2020 I've seen referenced before: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512
almodsz@reddit
That's just energy. We are using over 70% of the planet’s ice-free land, around a quarter of which has been degraded. We're facing biodiversity loss, depleted soil, freshwater stress and climate change. We're fighting on multiple fronts, and they are all collapsing.
JMaster098@reddit
And how much of that is due to Capitalism's fundamental requirement of never ending growth?
AZORxAHAI@reddit
Pretty much all of it, but there is a large subsect of this subreddit that prefer eco-fascism where the solution is cutting population to reality.
pianoblook@reddit
I don't disagree? Everything is extremely fucked right now.
No-Candidate6257@reddit
Why do you ask for sources instead of looking them up yourself?
godhandgriot@reddit
stop saying this bullshit
cosmicosmo4@reddit
This isn't about unequal resource distribution at all, it's about calories of food. The paper referenced in the OP (you can read it) calculates a maximum of 2.5 billion people that can be supported by the biosphere's ability to produce food in a 100% sustainable way - meaning zero fossil fuel usage. Currently, fossil fuel feedstock is used in a massive way to produce fertilizer that boosts crop yields.
The paper you linked is all about energy in general, doesn't distinguish between different types of energy sources or sinks, and doesn't make that same assumption of zero fossil fuel consumption in calculating the minimum total energy requirement that a person needs.
There's no way to use solar or nuclear energy to produce fertilizer, so you can't use the results of one paper to refute the other. They're about different things.
No-Candidate6257@reddit
Also known as just "capitalism".
There is no "good" way to do capitalism. Capitalism is inherently bad.
DummyAccount4ADumbo@reddit
You know, I keep hearing this, and never hear anything pointing to why the person saying this thinks this to be the case; that we can just stop being capitalists, and then the current population "problems" will solve themselves short of global mass starvation or else a continuation of the environment-obliterating status quo of non-renewable consumption.
How do you sustain agriculture on anything resembling the scale necessary for even a third of this world's population without the Haber-Bosch process? You can't sustain fossil fuels, after all. We'd have to rape the land even harder without it just to keep feeding ourselves, and you can bet the alternative practice would be very far from sustainable if maximal output becomes the only concern.
I often hear "no just eat the billionaires lole problem solved" equivalents, and while the things I would have happen to Peter Thiel would get my account banned from the website, I don't see how we're going to keep much above pre-industrial levels of food with how damaged the environment's gotten just from agriculture alone. Ignoring the no-way-out issue of our mass production of aerosol pollutants also staving off like 2 degrees of warming feedback, which would also completely fuck over any attempt to keep the world's population afloat.
I look forward to your thoughts; you'd be the first one to offer a defense of this idea that I've seen on here.
CXgamer@reddit
I've had these discussions before. One concrete answer was to move to a central economy with forced labour. People that currently work in non-essential fields would move to places where basic needs are unmet.
LeninsMommy@reddit
Traditionally to survive in food insecure areas, particularly in the third world, but historically since feudal times, most people had their own personal garden that they tended to.
Instead today, many people have useless lawns and we use massive amounts of water and fertilizer just to keep them healthy.
Now multiply this concept a million times over throughout the entire global capitalist economy. Picking peaches in Georgia, sending them to Vietnam to be packaged in plastic that will last 2,000 years, and then sending it back to America for sale. A massive waste of resources, but the market incentivizes this behavior.
500 different dish soap varieties, when we could just standardize its production under one state owned company and fund research into further development.
The crisis of overproduction is a massive issue with capitalist markets systems. Famously during the great depression, farmers burned oranges and apples to keep prices high, while at the same time people starved.
This is the problem right here, not people existing. This planet could sustain many more billions of people, but the problem is the way we structure our economic production for profit instead of centering it around human need and common sense solutions.
The whole idea here is to shift the issue onto people simply existing instead of the very economic system that's causing the issue is nothing but genocidal capitalist propaganda. They're trying to get you on board with culling the population.
arthurthomasrey@reddit
Just a question based on your response. Do you see any benefits to permaculture? Regenerative agriculture? Diversifying the food supply?
DummyAccount4ADumbo@reddit
Going away from "stuff I know a little bit about" to "stuff I can only pretend to know anything about" with this, but as far as permacultured land, the benefits of self-grown and non-chemically-treated produce aside, seems to be more resilient to things like drought conditions and lack of water. On an individual level you could probably combine that with foraging (unless you live in like, NYC. Then good luck) and thrive. Extrapolating it out to the scale of millions, billions, even assuming the moneyed interests of the current status quo could be shoved aside? That I don't know anything at all about. But if I could snap my fingers, yeah, we'd swap to organic/permaculture pronto. Feeding billions without fossil fuel fertilizers even with optimized permaculture might be out of the question, but I'm ass-pulling. Something worth looking into, honestly, if you have access to JSTOR or something. I might look this up myself this spring. Could give life a little bit more joy knowing there's more than just symbolic benefit to trying to better the local area.
Long-term, like, past your and my lifespans, I don't think we can escape the heating death-trap of aerosols and all the points-of-no-return we've passed. The literature out there on ecology and collapse/overshoot since Limits to Growth was first published is not looking good. Industrial civilization, as a concept, is on a timer.
Start as you mean to go, I wager. Permaculture is probably the only way to go if all worries about collapse and the world burning end up being unfounded, because the rape of the world via agriculture will still be a massive issue. Monocropping isn't feasible, afaik, if global supply chains get majorly disrupted, and either you regenerate the land or you watch it erode to dust and bedrock like the former Fertile Crescent with its initial love of agriculture and civilization.
Boremanfreeman@reddit
Chill chatgpt
DummyAccount4ADumbo@reddit
I would be embarrassed to so brazenly declare I had such poor reading comprehension and pattern recognition skills that I mistake someone else knowing anything for their text being from a fucking glorified spellchecker script. Good for you for being so courageous.
Boremanfreeman@reddit
Umm. Okay?
HommeMusical@reddit
That article is just hopium.
"Currently, only 17% of global final energy consumption is from non-fossil fuel sources" but if we convince a lot of rich people to drop their standards of living by an order of magnitude...
UndoxxableOhioan@reddit
That study isn’t remotely “doable.” The assumptions suck. 15 sq m of living space? Thats it? My house is over 100 sq m and just has 2. Guess we need to find 5 roommates. 50 l of water? People use 4 times that. And the usual assumptions about magic new technology.
Sorry, that proves nothing.
UrSven@reddit
I get confused every time I read news like this, so Malthusian. We already know that we have enough resources (resources here referring to a group of animals; food would be the basic need), and there are even leftovers and waste. This isn't the first news story I've seen on this subreddit this month. What you're mentioning is indeed one of the problems, in addition to the disorganized distribution of these resources.
Portalrules123@reddit (OP)
Can we though? I think that assuming we stopped using fossil fuels instantly we would be unable to support over 8 billion people whether billionaires continued to exist or not. Plus ecological systems are already so degraded that good luck getting enough food without the chemical fertilizers that often also need fossil fuels to be produced…..we have become somewhat dependent on them in a very addictive way.
RsquSqd@reddit
Sustain? Yeah I do think we could sustain what we have now in terms of population if we were to liquidate our billionaire ‘assets’
Impossible-Virus2678@reddit
Forget consumers. Capitalism comes with the incessant need to produce if revenue must grow every quarter. How much of all this junk do we need?
DLTMIAR@reddit
We need more of the first 2 Rs: reduce and reuse
ConsumeLess
BoisterousBard@reddit
I agree!
Though all are worth mentioning:
Reduce / Reuse / Repair / Repurpose / Recycle
I was only taught three of these as a child.
DLTMIAR@reddit
Meh, reuse = repair and repurpose, but semantics
Konradleijon@reddit
Yes it demands growth
Arctic_Chilean@reddit
they know this... which is why they want to accelerate the collapse
mem2100@reddit
IF and ONLY IF we had established a fully self sufficient colony off planet - maybe you'd be right. Global collapse will greatly increase the chance of Nuclear exchanges. Their are 9 (nearly 10) nuclear armed states. A bunker is fine for a few months. For long term survival you need a lot of farmland (or a hell of a lot of greenhouses), hundreds of specialists and engineers as well as a battalion of Private Military Contractors to defend it.
No way to predict how nukes will impact the weather and radiation levels.
No sane person WANTS collapse....
crowcawer@reddit
I’m choosing to look at the future in 6-month increments at this point.
GTA6 looks cool, Fable looks like it could be neat, I’m not holding my breath for The Witcher 4.
Vyzantinist@reddit
They're doing a new Fable game?
Parking_Chance_1905@reddit
Have been for like 5 years now.
Kazuma_Megu@reddit
Please tell be it's not X-Box exclusive.
TheOldPug@reddit
Elder Scrolls 6 will be out ANY MINUTE.
Traditional_Way1052@reddit
lol. W4 would be amazing. Have you tried crimson desert? I'm playing kcd2 atm.
crowcawer@reddit
I’m like 4 games behind the narrative right now.
Crimson desert isn’t going to make my list.
Maybe if I drop all my hobbies, but I’m helping my kid through TOTK right now so that’s eating up my open world adventuring.
HommeMusical@reddit
The chances of us having done that in the past, even in an alternative universe, are 0.0000000%. The chances of us doing that in the future are very similar.
6rwoods@reddit
Your first mistake is assuming that the average rich person is sane. Many of the super rich are actually fully insane and do want collapse because they want to create some kind of great reset where they emerge as techno emperors to rule over what’s left. And yes, that sounds insane, but you can’t forget that lots of these guys were precisely the nerdy outcast types who grew up watching post apocalyptic sci fi and day dreaming about how “one day I’ll show them how I’m better than them”. They are not sensible people.
Mister_Maintenance@reddit
The forest fires from a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India would cause a global catastrophe in itself. Billions of people would die due to the loss of sunlight preventing crops from growing. This is one possible result among many.
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
who is "they"?
the world has over 8 billion people....are you suggesting "they" made the world population climb super highjust so it can collapse?
What a dumb conspiracy.
shortround10@reddit
Yep, humans desperately desire coherent systems. It’s comforting to think someone is steering the ship, even if they’re evil. The alternative - uncontrolled chaos - is much harder to swallow.
trickortreat89@reddit
Exactly… it’s so inconvenient to think about how stupid the human race can be, that there’s not any billionaires or world leaders sitting together in a room, deciding on the future for our civilization… wait
shortround10@reddit
I see, so you think our world leaders have secret plans to depopulate the earth and they talk about these plans together behind closed doors?
trickortreat89@reddit
lol, I wasn’t indicating that at all. I was just trying to state the complete obvious - that we do actually have world leaders who’s literal job description is to decide the policy that shape our world and our future. They sit together in rooms to do so quite regularly. And the billionaires are represented in these rooms as well, in the form of lobbying.
Again, not concluding wether they have secret plans about depopulation, it’s possible but most likely they don’t as that would be a double bluff of dimensions I would say
oldsecondhand@reddit
Yes, there are world leaders and they only plan for the next four years.
mtmag_dev52@reddit
But uncontrolled chaos (or rather, minimally controlled) ala the laissez-faire politics of infinite growth is happening right now! Why is reality STILL so hard to swallow?
mashem@reddit
No, they're suggesting those with power know we've gone too far and that the sooner it goes back down, the better for them and their own.
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
Cool equally vapid when you put it this way....there are all these conspiracies about "elites" trying to "depopulate" the world....so should we resist and defy this? You say it will be better for them....how? Why does the richest man in the world (Musk) constantly go around having babies and complaining that people are not having enough kids?
HommeMusical@reddit
Translation of what you wrote: "I have no rational argument, so mockery will have to do."
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
vapid isn't an insult.....maybe learn what words mean before you talk about them?
I essentially said "yeah that doesn't help explain anything more than what the original comment said"
HommeMusical@reddit
Vapid is most certainly an insult. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vapid
Other similar words include: boring, dull, insipid, vapid, flat, jejune, banal, inane.
All of these words are negative in connotation.
This, too, is insulting, particularly since you are wrong. :-)
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
why are you so butthurt by this anyways? no one was even talking to you lol
mashem@reddit
I was trying to interpret what the other comment meant. Every group is fragmented with other groups. Even though all of the richest people in the world could be grouped as "the elites," that doesn't mean they see themselves as a team. Just like everyone else, they are fragmented by other things like politics, religion, race, nationality, economic industries, competitors within those industries, new/old money, etc.
These are the same things that also draw more conspiracies within everyone, that causes a natural resistance against those things.
A corporate board may make decisions they don't necessarily think is morally good, but they realize if they don't, their competitors will and then they'll lose footing. Or nations not wanting to be overly charitable without something in return, with concerns that they're working torwards being more vulnerable to nations not so generous.
Generally speaking, if a nation, broadly controlled by powerful people/entities, is concerned with world population, it wouldn't be ideal to dwindle the population here at home. Population density is actually very loose here in the US, tons of land. Though, they can still play favorites amongst the many groups within their population.
It's impossible calculus to really put your finger on. But all kinds of people are susceptible to all kinds of conspiracy. And when it comes to being taken down, the powerful can have this conspiracy more than most. Because they have more to lose. Their money, the following of their religion, the presence of their race, etc.
You'll see the low income groups still find lower income to resist against, if they feel they could still fall further.
Toxopsoides@reddit
Why are people upvoting this? How do you think a catastrophic human population crash will help "the economy"? I assume the "they" you're referring to are some sort of shadowy cabal of ultra rich global "elites"?
Hate to break it to you (assuming you're just ignorant and not here saying silly shit like this out of bad faith) but "they" already have everything they need: an endless supply of desperate and disillusioned people to do all the work and consume all the goods while the 0.1% profit.
Collapse isn't going to be pretty, but it's the equivalent of aggressive chemotherapy treatment to stop the cancerous tumour that is "the economy".
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
It's most people's core, basic, sacred cow type of belief that more population and more babies = absolute good. Often coupled with or deriving from their own strong desire and lifelong dream of having kids.
If they're confronted with the idea that it's not doing us as a species and the kids in particular any good, they will be forced to examine their entire mental framework, maybe even feel guilty about the kids that they've already had.
This is the kind of topic that is extremely controversial even in communities dedicated to collapse. Most people are strongly pro-natalist, even here.
False_Raven@reddit
Collapse is the fastest way to cull humans
zue4@reddit
This used to be why having wars ever couple decades was good for us. This has been the longest period of global peace in human history and ots led to our population exploding and all these problems exacerbating.
If WWIII doesn't happen soon then we're truly screwed. If it does then there's a chance to call enough of the population thats whats left might be able to turn things around
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Hi, zue4. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:
Please refer to the Addressing Overpopulation (https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims#wiki_addressing_overpopulation) section of the guide.
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Ree_For_Thee@reddit
Collapse is the ~~fastest~~ only way to cull humans........
Actually I'm joking. 12% of humanity dies of old age every decade. Just control your population humanely, through politics, family planning, economic incentives, contraceptives, women's rights...
bakerfaceman@reddit
Isn't that mostly happening anyway? Sure it's not fast enough, but human populations seem to shrink as women get greater autonomy and people live more stable lives.
Ree_For_Thee@reddit
I don't know, but I suspect just... total arable land mass being capped out is the culprit.
Taraxian@reddit
Malthusian calorie restrictions are absolutely not the reason for declining birthrates, or there wouldn't be an extremely clear negative correlation between birthrates and income
The wealthiest countries have much lower birthrates than the poorest, and wealthier people in wealthy countries have fewer kids than poorer people
Birthrates are not 4x as high in Sudan as Switzerland because people in Switzerland have a harder time affording groceries
northrupthebandgeek@reddit
Birth rates decline in richer countries because childhood mortality declines in richer countries. When you're reasonably confident that any given child of yours will survive into adulthood, you feel less inclined to have multiple children “just in case”.
Obviously there are other factors, too (better contraception access, less cultural emphasis on birthright inheritance as the main way to obtain and retain socioeconomic status, etc.), but “I don't need to have 10 children to guarantee at least one of them lives long enough to give me grandkids” is a big one.
In this sense, Malthusian calorie restrictions might actually increase birth rates if they increase childhood mortality rates.
Downtown_Statement87@reddit
If the only way to support this unsustainable number of people is through fossil fuels, and the oligarchs blow up all the fossil fuels and infrastructure, well...the problem of unsustainable numbers of people gets solved pretty quickly according to this study.
trickortreat89@reddit
Interesting and bizarre that it seems to be the direction we’re going right now under the command of the one man who seems to care less about sustainability out of all men
kingfofthepoors@reddit
I have been saying this people for years and nobody listens. This has always been the goal, mass dieoff.
bakerfaceman@reddit
Yep. Kill the poor
CyberSmith31337@reddit
You know what’s crazy, is that I am 100% positive if any country in the world offered completely covered, pain-free euthanasia as an option, a staggering amount of people would absolutely willingly sign up for it.
I’m not even 50 yet, but if you told me there was a place that would laughing-gas me to sleep, and then turn the lights out permanently, I would 100% sign up for it. As long as I don’t have to go to fucking work anymore.
sp0rkify@reddit
I'm 37, and now fully disabled because of multiple health issues.. most notably, because my spine is literally deteriorating.. (part of it is cervical myelomalacia.. which means my spinal cord was compressed for so long that, even after surgery, it just died..)
Oddly enough, it was my pregnancy that kick started everything (except my celiac and lactose intolerance..).. confirmed by all of my 9 doctors..
I have endometriosis, degenerative disc disease (my spine is 80, apparently..), myelomalacia, osteoarthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, complex regional pain syndrome, myofascial pain syndrome, mixed connective tissue disease (suspected Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.. waiting on genetics - in Canada it's a 2-5 year wait..), paraseptal emphysema, and suspected Lupus..
I'm on my provinces disability program.. and my daughter and I are expected to live on $23,000/year.. if it wasn't for my parents, who charge us significantly below market rent (ODSP gives us $975.. which all goes to them for a 2-bedroom granny suite attached to their house..), we would 100% be homeless.. because you can't even rent a room in my incredibly rural part of Ontario for less than $1000/month..
To say I'm drowning, is the understatement of the century..
We have MAiD here in Canada.. but, because none of my illnesses are terminal (myelomalacia can be, if it spreads to the areas where the nerves that control heart rate and breathing are located..), I don't qualify..
Hopefully, by the time my daughter is a little older and her father is doing a little better (the job market here is also shite.. he was jobless for almost a year.. and severely underemployed for the 2 years before that.. and owes me almost $8,000 in child support.. ) they'll have opened it up a little more and I'll qualify.. because trying to survive like this, while the world is like this.. is fucking impossible..
I'm tired, man.. so.. fucking.. tired.. 🥲
chefkoolaid@reddit
Man I thought this was my alt acct til the endo (,Im a dude)
Im so sorry I can 100% understand the pain you deal iwth. Its incredibly difficult.
Accomplished_Lie1461@reddit
I got carbon monoxide poisoning once and it was pretty pleasant until the comedown.
Ok-Restaurant4870@reddit
I’m laughing but also not the ha ha laugh.
netherlanddwarf@reddit
Thanos
PetuniaPicklePepper@reddit
Just a fascinating reference point as food for thought.
ShackledDragon@reddit
Holy fuck it just goes straight up.
old-legs-623@reddit
And there it is; 10,000 BCE might be our sustainable population ...
DLTMIAR@reddit
I think we may currently be a tad bit higher than the population at 10,000 BCE
old-legs-623@reddit
bingo
03263@reddit
Any time before agriculture yeah
GuluGuluBoy@reddit
What's that bump? Seems a bit early for plague.
UuusernameWith4Us@reddit
It looks about right for plague. If you zoom in you can see the numbering of the x axis is offset from the actual lines.
Ree_For_Thee@reddit
WW1/2
Konradleijon@reddit
Also capitalism
Konradleijon@reddit
Overshoot
Rare_Fly_4840@reddit
There are enough resources for easily double the current population. The problem is allocation. More accurately, the problem is Capitalism.
arisasam@reddit
Malthusian death cult propaganda — Earth can support this population under a different system
morganational@reddit
I love that I have this sub and r/optimistsunite. One tells me we're all dead tomorrow, one says everything is fine. Keeps me balanced.
coredweller1785@reddit
This is eugenics.
We cant find a better way to sustain life? Give me a break
WildlingViking@reddit
This is why I HATE economists who advocate for people to have babies so the current economic systems can keep churning out profits for the epstein / billionaire class.
To expect, or even demand, infinite growth on a finite planet is insanity.
Jibeset@reddit
Because society breaks down quickly if there isn’t a controlled policy. For example, I think every country could do their part by getting rid of all welfare systems. Low birthrates won’t get us to a lower population quickly enough, we need mortality rates to increase.
It would have a knock on effect of decreasing the risks of riots and revolutions as well, giving more of a buffer to keep humanity going without returning us to feudalism/tribalism.
Pull the plug, especially wealthier nations subsidizing poorer ones, which I think is already starting to play out. A lot of Africa could be reduced along with India. South/North/Central America, China and Europe will be harder, but repatriate immigrants, cut off migration, and get rid of welfare, and we can probably reduce the human payload considerably. Especially with some good old fashioned warring.
TheAfroNinja1@reddit
What do you think happens when most of the population is old and no one is having kids after a couple generations? Ill tell you its nothing good.
RamblinRoyce@reddit
Old people Hunger Games!!!
InvisibleAstronomer@reddit
Tons of countries are behind on birth rates so
refusemouth@reddit
Low birth rates alone won't fix it. We need higher mortality, too. That's in the pipeline, I expect. If life expectancy went back down to around 45 or 50, the population would stabilize. If we poison the environment some more and have some really big wars, we can get down to 2.5 billion in 100 years.
Jibeset@reddit
Sounds like Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran, et al will be a good thing in the end. India seems primed for the chopping block as well I suspect.
OkTaste2073@reddit
Yes yes yes thanos
anothernic@reddit
Climate change causing collapse of agricultural fecundity worldwide combined with modern agribusinesses dependence on oil will probably do it in half that time from mass famine.
eoz@reddit
I'm pretty sure most of us are gonna die in famines in the next ten years
anothernic@reddit
It'll be a lot sooner than a century, at any rate. I'm in the imperial core (USA) so I don't expect it to be that fast for me, if I'm still spending ever more year over year on basic pantry staples.
BerryLanky@reddit
I don’t buy into conspiracy theories but I feel like Covid was a test run to reduce the aged population. And the multiple vaccines are being monitored to determine which one is safest for long term. Then the billionaires can release a super virus and bunker down with their vaccines until it passes
Orb-of-Muck@reddit
The technology to make that supervirus is already way more accesible than anyone is comfortable with. One could basically create one in their garage for a few hundred bucks. COVID didn't have any markers of artificial manipulation but the aspect of that conspiracy nobody questions is how easy it would be.
trickortreat89@reddit
The time between global pandemics is accelerating (downwards) as well. From thousands to hundreds to decades and is now down to approximately around 5 years. Covid is now around 5 years ago. The next global pandemic is just around the corner, no one probably even has to design it
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
Bird flu? I heard, we've had the first human case in the EU the other day. Corvid-26?
BeastofPostTruth@reddit
Captain trips completly agrees.
GanSaves@reddit
🎶All our times have come…🎶
BeastofPostTruth@reddit
Here, but now they're gone
Fun_Journalist4199@reddit
Don’t forget that they burned so much trust in the system that for the next super virus only the most compliant folk will get the vaccine.
They could do a new super virus, offer the vaccine, and still cull everyone who doesn’t do as they’re told
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
It's not that most individuals have only lived to their 40s, it's that there used to be an absurdly high maternal, infant and child mortality before the advent of the modern medicine and especially, vaccines.
Humans have been living into their 60s and even 70s for much longer than most people people realize. We've also been taking care of our elderly, injured and disabled since time immemorial.
The first sign of civilization wasn't the tools and weapons we produced, it was actually the presence of healed bones and visible deformities on the remains of adults in burials.
whoisfourthwall@reddit
i mean.. unless there is a global nuclear war or incurable pandemic that only a fraction of people are resistant/immune to...
The recent headlines makes one of that seem like a possibility, while the ongoing animal farrming industry and growing antibiotics resistance makes the other a possibility as well.
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
life expectancy has never been 40 or 50 because people died that young, that was always cause babies and children often died.
03263@reddit
Paleolithic life expectancy at age 15 around ~48-54, with many living into 60s, 70s and even 80s.
Main risks today are lifestyle factors and increased spread of disease. In the past, risks were famine/lack of food, violence, trauma from accidents.
One thing we can not do is interview a person from so long ago and discover their perception of death and if they fear it as much as modern humans.
Urshilikai@reddit
no need to do the fascist's work for them
sotek2345@reddit
One really big war and we get well below that in a week.
liatrisinbloom@reddit
"It could even be tonight."
After_Resource5224@reddit
VENUS BY TUESDAY!
stirfry720@reddit
Lower birth rates would mean more people would be dying you science wiz
Impossible_Past5358@reddit
And the shit's really gonna hit the fan next year since so many farmers couldn't plant this year...
sedatedforlife@reddit
Where are these farmers who couldn't plant located?
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
He'll probably say "America". Farmers have been relying on underpaid illegal immigrants for workforce for a very long time, and now ICE is going after them. Idk how much of an impact it makes when it comes to the planting part of the process, though. I heard, it did affect the harvesting.
And then there's the oil crisis and the shortage of the fertilizers that are based on fossil fuels in one way or another.
Laruae@reddit
Please investigate the fertilizer shortage. Somewhere around 2/3 farmers in the USA were reporting that they had no source prepared for their next planting. The Straight of Hormuz is going to make this even worse.
sedatedforlife@reddit
Yeah, that doesn’t prevent planting. It can impact yield, although more next harvest than this one.
I love being downvoted for not being gloomy enough.
Laruae@reddit
Obviously doesn't prevent planting but if most of these farms are reliant on fertilizer rather than natural replenishing the yield is going to be heavily impacted.
Agreeable_Ocelot@reddit
Many are in the United States of America, incredibly!
Impossible_Past5358@reddit
The impact is global, since fertilizer can't be transported through the Straight of Hormuz..
sedatedforlife@reddit
I see! Thanks for that. We haven't hit planting season yet in my area, and there isn't a fertilizer shortage in my area either, so I wasn't thinking of that. I wonder what the impact of that will be, exactly. Planting without fertilizer is possible, of course, but a lack of nutrients can impact yield significantly, depending on the existing health of the land. For example, my dad farms without using fertilizer at all and has great yield, but it requires that he farms in a certain way to replenish the nutrients in the soil naturally.
No-Albatross-5514@reddit
So what? The overall population is growing and growing. Who cares about a statistical number most people don't understand anyway
CrustyRim2@reddit
Well, these billionaires need more cheap labor, so they had better step up.
BellaRyder2505@reddit
Humans will always breed. It's disgusting and selfish and cruel. I hope the population all over the world goes down.
Emil01d@reddit
I'm all for personal choice myself. And i think reproduction can be one of the most beautiful things we see on earth, in all species. Humanity isn't a problem. It's the billionaire class who are most personally responsible for gross emissions, and there aren't that many of them. They're the ones who need to change.
BellaRyder2505@reddit
Humans have always been the problem and will always be the problem
Ooftwaffe@reddit
I volunteer to die
No-Candidate6257@reddit
Bullshit.
The earth could easily sustain billions more people.
The problem is capitalism.
Capitalism is an incredibly inefficient and ineffective system that produces endless amounts of waste.
The sustainable population is much higher than that - under eco communism. Something that China is actively building towards. 100% renewables/fusion plus ever stricter environmental policies and zero waste production with ever increasing penalties for inefficient resource allocation (starting with food waste).
Emil01d@reddit
Agree, and i thought this dehumanising myth had been put to bed ages ago.
depravator@reddit
Daily reminder that the 'overpopulation' problem that makes headlines every once in a while is nothing more than a capitalist, consumerist propaganda tool/myth aimed at not solving the real issues inherent in the system we live in.
It's not 8 billion people existing that's destroying the Earth, it's the massive corporations that dump toxic waste into the oceans, cut down all the worlds forests, and inject comical amounts of money into the system that allows them to do so.
Always remember: Totally wiping out, burning or gassing your brown, black, green, red or turquoise neighbors will not solve any problem. It will just make it easier for the light-bending, mega-rich people to rule you better.
Emil01d@reddit
So true. Billionaire carbon emissions are disproportionately massive. According to Oxfam a person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon in a day than someone in the bottom 50% produces in an entire year.
CrabMeat6984@reddit
There’s only one answer…….GREED
frogwithalog@reddit
Reminds me of the book Ishmael
ndilegid@reddit
Great call out. That book was so spot on and was a mind blowing read when I was younger.
Its PDF is available via Internet Archive
Rakan-Han@reddit
Every time I see anything that is related to overpopulation, I am reminded of Agent Smith's speech:
notislant@reddit
I was watching a video animation on paris expanding throughout the years. My first thought was wow it spread like a disease.
Wk1360@reddit
I used to think that shit was soo deep, and then I turned 15
notislant@reddit
Now you're all about 6-7 I guess
GeneralZojirushi@reddit
Every other mammal lives a viciously violent life where dying peacefully of old age is an outlier event.
Other species aren't more noble. Their equilibrium is disease, starvation, dehydration or being torn apart and eaten.
We'll be reaching our own equilibrium in very much the same fashion soon enough.
03263@reddit
You overstate the plight of other creatures.
Actually it's leading to me an interesting hypothesis. The main driver behind human civilization may be fear of death. They don't anticipate and fear death like we do.
Hmm. Lots of angles to consider.
jarielo@reddit
Human population will eventually find the equilibrium. We’ve been able to fool nature thus far, but will without a doubt get to the number which the environment can support. We’re in the start of that correction.
saaggy_peneer@reddit
we'll get their one way or another
Portalrules123@reddit (OP)
SS: Related to overconsumption, overpopulation, and resource collapse as a new study has estimated that the global sustainable “carrying capacity” for humanity is around 2.5 billion people, well short of the roughly 8.3 billion we currently have. The authors argue that the only reason we have been able to sustain more than that for decades is our rampant use of unrenewable and therefore unsustainable resources like fossil fuels. It’s likely that, if humanity wanted to truly live in balance with nature, even 2.5 billion may be pushing it. Basically, it is undeniable that the Earth simply cannot sustain the current rate of consumption that our rapid growth has caused, and things would only get worse if we tried to provide everyone on Earth with a “first-world” consumerist lifestyle. So, I would argue that this research firmly supports the hypothesis that overpopulation is indeed an issue, and would likely lead to ecological and then societal collapse even if climate change magically stopped right now. Expect religious people and especially economists to continue denying this and arguing for infinite growth even as Earth’s vital systems start to totally shut down.
blingblingmofo@reddit
Does this go by like if everyone had a first world standard of living or an average standard of living?
Taylo@reddit
To have 8 billion people at a sustainable level, we'd need to be approximately living at the standard of a Bangladeshi subsistence farmer. We could sustain the emissions of an average Chadian. Unfortunately, that is a huge downgrade in living standards that the vast majority of citizens in developed countries would never accept. In order to have a higher standard of living we'd need to have drastically less people, even if we were maximizing efficiency and using much more renewable energy and fuel sources. It's just not sustainable with such massive numbers of people.
TeaInASkullMug@reddit
Yikes. Seriously? Regress to substance farming? If thats the solution, than death to nature, I guess.
Bhavacakra_12@reddit
Or we in developed countries could stop having luxuries that people in Bangladesh could only dream of. Surely that is more easily done than pretending overpopulation is the issue?
Agreeable_Ocelot@reddit
That’s literally the same thing they’re saying just with different values attribution.
Bhavacakra_12@reddit
No it's not. The comment I replied to literally put the blame on the amount of people and not on the disastrous way developed nations live their lives.
blingblingmofo@reddit
I mean all this article says is
“Bradshaw argues that the number is nowhere near today’s population of about 8.3 billion, and that the only reason we’ve been able to support this many people is because we’ve been burning through stored resources and leaning heavily on fossil fuels.”
Which means if we don’t switch to renewables we can’t sustain the planet forever at this population which should be obvious since.
But renewables are constantly improving and economics will lead to change.
Dapper_Maybe_4203@reddit
Humans were probably more in harmony with Earth when we were nomadic. We were likely consuming less and allowing our environment to heal in our absences. We had to carry everything we owned as we sought the resources we needed to survive day by day according to the seasons and climate. Perhaps this is what we are returning to, along with a correction in our numbers.
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
I won't necessarily agree, we were already such a successful group of species that we changed the climate in our wake, made several species go extinct (including other proto-humans).
Even the earlier hominins did that, not just the more recent ones like the Neanderthals or Denisovans.
trashmoneyxyz@reddit
If the climate changes drastically enough we might see people become nomadic again to adapt to it in the far future. If storms get so extreme in hurricane season that you cannot build permanent structures, and summers get so hot that you cannot survive outdoor temps, then yeah you kinda have to pick up and leave at certain points of the year.
qyo8fall@reddit
Lol, some astounding conclusions you’ve made from this paper, whose own conclusions are dubious and require further study.
First off, the model it uses to reach the 2.5 Billion figure is the Ricker model, which assumes that once carrying capacity is exceeded, population decline begins. Instead, humans have repeatedly approached local or system limits, and expanded carrying capacity through technology. In fact, because the Ricker model was designed for fish, deer and such, it makes several assumptions that simply don’t apply to humans, and I see no evidence that modifications were made to the model to reflect this. The only place where these factors were even considered was calculation of the fixed carrying capacity, which, again, has never been fixed for humanity.
It is true that our global population is well beyond 2-3 billion because of fossil fuels. But that’s largely a function of energy output, not much else outside of Hydrogen, but that too can be supplied by hydrolysis. This overshoot is a massive short-term issue, no doubt, but that issue goes hand-in-hand with the climate crisis. Fossil fuels must be replaced, and scientists already have drawn up the plans for this. It includes an entire array of renewables that can one-day meet and eventually far exceed what fossil fuels currently provide. simple as, and that will be forced by the conditions, whether it’s population overshoot or climate change, whichever comes first (all evidence points to the latter coming first). Our goal in solving this short-term problem is to push for an accelerated solution, so long-term pain is minimized.
What does it mean to “truly live in balance with nature”? Is it harmonic with nature that we raise cattle? Or occupy forests, meadows and plains with farmland? Because without those in principle the carrying capacity of earth is 10 million humans. What about industry, which btw, has never been divorced from fossil fuels? Because without that, we’d be well below 2.5 billion for carrying capacity as well.
This research hardly has the novel evidence to support the claim that overpopulation is even a bigger issue than demographic collapse/underpopulation, let alone as big of an issue as you’re making it out to be. Rather, it sensationalizes a well-known fact for many decades now: Unsustainable practices, have driven up a massive ecological debt, mostly through fossil fuel usage, that must be paid down. This debt essentially stimulates massive population growth which creates a feedback loop as billions more demand more fossil fuel usage and energy consumption. The solution simply doesn’t start with looking at population.
comradejiang@reddit
it’s hippie-fash shit that’s become shockingly mainstream, designed for and regurgitated by people that barely understand statistics
neutralcoder@reddit
We don’t need to be in harmony with nature 100%. We can carry and sustain higher populations given renewable resources and impact minimization. Both of those have become politicized though so we’re fucked.
Low_Complex_9841@reddit
I was reading archive yesternight, and found this debate from 2003 interesting
https://orbhab.com/forums/7/3532/
I found it interesting that "pro-socialist/degrowth" position was surely present even back there, and sadly default response was from pro-capitalis/techno-optimist viewpoint? I wonder how last 23 years affected debatants?
Similar tensions surely were here even as far back as in 1975, but unfortunately "just save Earth!" turned out to be at least just as long-time project as Solar Power Satellites, and nowadays we live in a world where yearly co2 emissions at 30 Gt vs just 5 in 1992 (1)! Ah, as it turned out this super-exponential nature of capitalist's growth grow negative effects just as fast! I guess nowadays it slightly clear why such specific growth pattern imposed - due to banking system and their percentage calculations ("future must be bigger in money !, for XX% each year, or else!"), it was noted back in those early discussions but promoted as feature, not bug ("government project can grow only lineary, commercial - exponentially!").
Today we know a bit more about negative consequences, but have even less (illusion?) of control of those behemoth-sized systems (Govts and Finance). Quite sad, if you ask me.
(1)
https://ssi.org/reading/ssi-newsletter-archive/ssi-newsletters-1992-0506/
> [...] and that, unlike the present irreversible dumping of 5,000 megatons per year of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or the generation of long-lived nuclear wastes, the SPS system would leave no chemicals or radioactives behind if our descendants decided to turn it off.
Highlight by me ....
LegSpecialist1781@reddit
This reminds me of the Ron White joke… “How far can we get on 1 engine?!” “All the way to the crash site.”
We’ll get to the sustainable population, whatever that number really is, one way or another.
ttystikk@reddit
Several thoughts;
Technology generally works to support larger populations living better lives, at least temporarily. Hint: we're living in the temporary part.
I think 2.5 billion people is still too many for long term sustainability, unless we're okay with a drastic reduction of biodiversity. One billion is a more believable number and maybe one hundred million would allow for long term coexistence with the ecosystem as we remember it.
Getting from today's population of over 8 billion down to one billion does not need to be violent but that would require a China style one child policy, along with a lottery to ensure an equal number of boys and girls. Frankly, there is no way humanity has the maturity to manage such a multi generational enterprise peacefully or fairly so we're pretty much fucked.
I'm pushing 60 so I'll be gone before most of the worst outcomes start affecting humanity. But they ARE coming; Thomas Malthus wasn't wrong about anything but the ability of technology to delay the inevitable while extending the overshoot. I'm developing technology to help people survive but I fear it will be misused. My hope is that it helps humanity survive its own cruelty and short-sightedness.
We are NOT going to weasel out if this impasse by blasting billions of people into space; we don't have the time, the technology or suitable destinations. There's also the "marching Chinese" paradox, a notion from my youth that posited that it would take so long to march every living Chinese person past a given spot, it would take so long that generations would grow up to replace those who had already walked past, creating an endless supply. That may not be true of China alone but it's definitely true of humanity writ large.
Environmental collapse, nuclear war, resource depletion, pollution, virus, runaway AI, meteor, mega volcano or any of a dozen other possibilities: It's hard to imagine which will do us humans in first, but the Earth will be fine, it will shake us off like a bad case of fleas and keep floating around the sun for billions of years. George Carlin was way ahead of us.
jbond23@reddit
ttystikk@reddit
You are correct.
MommaIsMad@reddit
Humans were a colossal mistake. They’ve taken a perfectly lovely planet and destroyed everything good
jbond23@reddit
It looks like consciousness, self awareness and general intelligence was a huge mistake.
mikesbikesyikes@reddit
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
RamblinRoyce@reddit
Yup we have just enough brains to create a bunch of shit and reproduce exponentially, but not enough brains to foresee and regulate ourselves.
traveledhermit@reddit
But the economy!
almodsz@reddit
Daily reminder that billionaires benefit from overpopulation. A larger population means more consumers and workers, and ultimately more economic expansion. This is precisely why figures such as Harry Triguboff, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have publicly dismissed or belittled concerns about overpopulation and instead actively pushed for population growth.
Physical_Ad5702@reddit
Overpopulation / a larger workforce means not enough jobs for everyone. Capitalists like this because they can find the most desperate people who will work for less money, not raise concerns about working conditions or safety.
Exploitation 101
Jessintheend@reddit
The concept of a middle class started post black plague when there was a worker shortage and people could actually demand livable wages for their work without someone more desperate right behind ready to take their place.
We don’t have enough resources for 8-10billion people
Reamazing@reddit
The infrastructure here isn't sustainable for the sheer amount of people we have in our country now. You can't get doctor or dentist appointments because they are always fully booked and have to wait at least three weeks to see your GP. Last time I went to the hospital I waited 9 hours in triage. We are bringing in lots of people from around the world but what we currently have in place can't cope with the current amount of people and it's just going to get worse.
Overpopulation is effecting us terribly here but you're not allowed to say anything because you're branded a racist. No man I just want to be able to get my issues looked at in a timely manner.
TheOtherHobbes@reddit
The running down of public health is a deliberate political strategy to promote privatisation. It has nothing to do with overpopulation. Many public health systems are covertly being optimised for profit, not for coverage.
Reamazing@reddit
It has everything to do with overpopulation, have you been inside a hospital recently? I went for a blood test with appointment which I had to wait 18 days for the next available one and the waiting room was packed full literally wall to wall and my appointment was 20 minutes late.
Can you tell me what's caused this? Going back 20 years ago it was nothing like this.
phaedrus910@reddit
Yes, my family is in the medical field, it's entirely due to the administrators not hiring the nurses/doctors needed and instead overworking the ones they have.
Reamazing@reddit
I understand that too.
I have made a previous comment about how we aren't building enough facilities and having the staff to fulfill all the nessassary roles. You know we wouldn't need all the excess staff if the rate of the population wasn't sky rocketing.
phaedrus910@reddit
Simply not true. The planet has more than enough carrying capacity for our current population but not for our current society. You would rather choose killing off billions of people than living in an apartment complex it's pretty obvious.
Reamazing@reddit
Yes, the planet might have the space but one city holding just shy of 10 million people can not.
If you have an influx of people to that degree then of course you're not going to have the correct infrastructure to maintain it. I don't know where you live but can your city hold 10m people? What would it have to do to accommodate that?
phaedrus910@reddit
They would need to be fully designed with that growth in mind, something easy to do when profit is not a consideration. Currently why would a developer build efficient apartments when they can build luxury for much more money.
zefy_zef@reddit
If you want more doctors, remove the biggest barrier to education: money. Make the requirements stricter for passing and you'll still have a more educated and healthy population than when you gatekeep social services.
Money is the largest barrier to a progressive society and capitalism is the weight that holds it down.
commutingonaducati@reddit
You're talking 1350s, I'd argue a middle class emerged after the industrial revolution, but that was 400 years later.
TheOtherHobbes@reddit
The original middle classes were the medieval merchants who traded between cities. Unlike peasants they weren't tied to a location or a lord, and unlike lords their main business wasn't war.
It didn't take long for trade to become a long-distance import/export activity across borders. Some merchants became incredibly wealthy importing spices, silks, and other luxury goods. Others became incredibly wealthy by lending money - often to kings and lords who needed to pay their armies. This eventually became modern banking and gave them tremendous political leverage in the late medieval and renaissance periods.
It-s_Not_Important@reddit
Those two concepts don’t have the overlap you think. The livable wages problem isn’t one of resources, it’s one of hoarding and exploitation just like it was back then.
The population drop just gave them the chance to fight the exploitation.
Our current inverse predicament is absolutely about resources though. And the exploitation of the hard capitalists is taking advantage.
wowzabob@reddit
Sorry this makes no sense. When there are more people, there are more jobs due to more people with needs and demands.
Decrease the number of people and you’re also decreasing the number of jobs
almodsz@reddit
They do love a good race to the bottom.
Distinguishedflyer@reddit
dow 50k!!!
Physical_Ad5702@reddit
I wonder what the “desperately needed private sector job” Trump referenced when he fired her is.
Maybe something at McKinsey?
Distinguishedflyer@reddit
Fox news.
Physical_Ad5702@reddit
Yeah, I could see that.
There’s a revolving door between Fox and the Trump admin
fragileirl@reddit
The earth can sustain the population we have now, it’s just that the allotment of resources is unbalanced. Billionaires control and hoard the majority of earth’s resources and they are only distributed to those who can “afford” them. And the ones who have more access to these resources disproportionately consume them in excess.
They convince the rest of us we need to spend money in excess, and that living without the solution to the problem they created would be like living in a third world country.
In addition, these billionaires in control have convinced people like you that the masses are the problem, that we are the ones consuming the planet to its doom, when in reality it’s them. This is a distraction.
hedgehogssss@reddit
Imagine how nicer if would be on earth with much much less people.
jmnugent@reddit
The problem is not "to many people".. the problem is "to many people clustered in to small areas". If you look at any world map that shows population density, it's pretty clear the vast majority of people cluster in cities. Start spreading people out more,. and we'd have less strain on resources.
hedgehogssss@reddit
Animals and nature need vast areas to remain human free to thrive. This anthropocentrism has to stop. We are not the only creatures that have belong.
jmnugent@reddit
OK.. ?.. Nothing you've said there is incongruent with what I said.
We can build things and also still have vast swaths of open areas. We just need to be creative and innovative about how we build things (innovative architecture, etc)
We also need to be more efficient about redesigning the stuff we already have. We need to stop designing "luxury high rise apartments" (where each apartment is 10k sq feet).. and start scaling those down to something more efficient
We can do all those things and still "preserve lots of open space". We just have to be smarter and more innovative and efficient at how we do it. (IE = we need to stop being so wasteful at how we design and use things)
hedgehogssss@reddit
I agree with what you say, but we also should have way less people around while at it. At least until we have the proper infrastructure to carry more without harming everything around and ourselves.
jmnugent@reddit
This is not really a feasible reality. Unless you know of some way to wave a magic wand and instantly eliminate the birth rate. (even if we could, that only fixes new births, it doesn't change who is already here)
We have to work with the reality we currently have. We should be looking for creative and positive ways to incentivize the behavior we want. If we want people to build smaller houses for example, we could give a 50% price reduction on new builds of smaller houses. Or if we want people to drive less and walk and bike more, we should build incentives to encourage people to do that.
Course that all depends on people up the leadership chain all aligning to support and incentivize the same "green" and "efficiency" ideals.. which I think we all know is unlikely to happen.
Individuals and communities can spark this change from the bottom too. Every little bit helps.
fragileirl@reddit
I don’t volunteer for this. Maybe you and your loved ones can.
I sincerely don’t believe it will be nicer. Life will be rougher with less people around to make things run. Less people to take on creative endeavors. Less efforts on things that are either less popular or less efficient. Just less variety in everything. Most likely, you won’t be able to choose a career, instead being assigned what is at a shortage.
j-endsville@reddit
Statistically, you won't make the cut.
verstohlen@reddit
That's what the population was in 1950. So those who have been saying it's been all downhill since the '50s ain't wrong I suppose.
verstohlen@reddit
Georgia Guidestones would like to have a word with study.
bluemagic124@reddit
Something something Malthusian doomerism something something ecofascism.
These people who think we can just endlessly grow the population annoy the fuck out of me.
Agreeable_Ocelot@reddit
It’s like a religion honestly. Crazy to see.
LunaeLotus@reddit
Funny you say that, since religion is usually fuelling these views of population growth
chickenthinkseggwas@reddit
The point is that these views are fuelled by both 'sides'. The left and the right. And both are equally dogmatically categorical in their thinking. For the left it's about sanctity and quality of life for all. But that's not achievable, or sustainable even to the extent that we have already achieved it. They won't even tolerate the discussion of consequences, let alone plans to deal with those consequences. They conflate the discussion of the consequences with arguments in favour of those consequences. We're going to have a nice, cosy, cheesy Star Trek future and we're not listening to your doomerism! Fingers in ears La la la la la la la...
Ok-Restaurant4870@reddit
I hate this timeline but see no end…
Sol_Infra@reddit
Seriously. I hate how reflexively they call anyone against unmitigated population growth malthusian. Im a firm believer that any given system can only support a certain amount of biomass and for stability it should never be anywhere near the limit.
FondabaruCBR4_6RSAWD@reddit
You’d think Reddit would be all for a sustainable carrying population, but the amount of people on this site outright defending not only maintaining but the ability to “sustainably” grow the population to north of 10B is ridiculous.
They’ll argue for this and complain about their/the quality of life for the average person decreasing in the same breath.
Agreeable_Ocelot@reddit
As a leftist (although surely not to their standards) what you realize about loud leftists is that they just don’t understand or desire to understand math.
Not even talking about corporations or something. A lot of these people have no idea what it takes to power our current society and yet are eager to promise its infinite.
It’s very hard to understand. It’s like a religion, frankly.
madcoins@reddit
and most people don't think about it at all meaning they likely believe population growth is sustainable and will not be a real world issue if they just keep not considering it.
GayGooners4Christ@reddit
I for one love eating Irish babies
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
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leothelion634@reddit
The simplest thought experiment is how many hospitals, schools, etc would be needed for 1 billion people, then realize that it only took 12 years for the population to grow by 1 billion people
gargle_ground_glass@reddit
Post this over at r/environment and learn how there's plenty of food, it's just a distribution problem, and anyone who thinks differently is a misanthrope.
adamsoutofideas@reddit
Closer to 1 billion, from my math. 1 billion and the planet recovers a little
va_wanderer@reddit
And that assumes equitable distribution of resources.
It's probably closer to 2 billion or even less, roughly human population a century ago. Whether we die off due to collapse or cold blooded murder each other to grab whatever possible for our own little tribes, we outgrew the planet decades ago.
euro_trashh@reddit
It's about the types of resources we use and the way they're being used. Billionaires will try to convince you that there's a need to cut down population numbers because that diverts attention from the underlying problems that truly make 8 billions of people unsustainable
Agreeable_Ocelot@reddit
Ironically the world’s richest man in history (who is deeply tied into the fascist infrastructure of the Epstein gang) is strongly encouraging unchecked population growth. Sure though.
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
All of them are encouraging the population growth. Same could be said about the politicians who are in their pockets.
What's absolutely insane to me is the number of tankies/Commies who parrot the billionaire talking points on the topic.
euro_trashh@reddit
There’s one. And then there’s others who say the opposite
fness55@reddit
Now where are the geniuses that claim we can sustain up to 12b people? 🤔
-sussy-wussy-@reddit
All over the comment section and the subreddit overall.
Dusk_Elk@reddit
meta-analysis by van den Bergh and Rietveld [23] examined 51 studies that produced 94 estimates of a limit to the global human population. Their median meta-prediction from these 51 studies was 7.7 billion people, but ranged from 650 million assuming a low-technology future where water availability is the main limiting factor, to 288 billion under the assumption of the ‘best’ future technology for all countries (with most estimates well above currently projected future global population sizes). The uncertainty stems mainly from the many different assumptions and dimensions considered in the projections, a problem we avoided by basing our estimates of maximum and sustainable carrying capacity on the population data alone.
Bradshaw is known to be an alarmist that makes headlines predicting doom cherry picking data to get lower numbers for carrying capacity for sensationalism. In this case he ignores the models in other studies, takes thier population data and forces it into his model with no contextual adaption is variance to produce an outcome that is not reflective of other studies while ignoring advances since the green revolution while projecting carrying capacity based on a worst case scenario where the whole world lives like Americans are projected to ignoring regional differences like places abundant in water using water more because thier is no ecological reason conserve etc.
thathoothslegion@reddit
Or maybe the rich fucks need to stop eating so much? Just asking
INtuitiveTJop@reddit
Were costly can’t sustain a lot of people and keep the earths natural habitats in tact. We are essentially turning earth into a human habitat.
ChesterGeorge@reddit
2.5 billion as the way things currently are? The problem with these over population statements is it doesn't account for the mega rich few people/corps that gobble so much resource and energy that is equal to what billions of normal people need and use.
Ricardo_klement@reddit
Actual real world workable solutions anyone … I’m listening 🤷♂️
(“Smaller populations with lower consumption create better outcomes for both people and the planet,” Bradshaw said.
“The window to act is narrowing, but meaningful change is still achievable if nations work together.”
And he ends with the idea that this isn’t just about environmentalism. It’s about the living conditions future people inherit.
“The choices we make over the coming decades will determine the well-being of future generations and the resilience of the natural world that supports all life,” Bradshaw concluded.)
Yes I did read this bit but there are no actual workable solutions.
sovietarmyfan@reddit
Especially problematic is that no country is willing to truly address this issue and do something about it.
There are many cultures and religions where it is normal to have as much children as possible. That should change. But unfortunately, i don't think those countries are willing to work with such change. They have excuses like: "You don't tell us what to do" or "god wants us to have children" or "your opinion is racist!".
What we will inevitably end up with is a world where we are scrounging for the last resources and thousands, perhaps millions of people dying daily. If things continue on like this. The support systems in many countries are slowly locking up and unable to provide people with basic care if they need it.
The only escape will be space travel but even putting 100 people in space may not be possible until at least 2050.
Gee_NS@reddit
our planet could house 300 billion to a trillion people, with proper management of corporations/pollution/resources. But the corporations and their politician boot lickers have ruined it for all of us.
YUSHOETMI-@reddit
Humanity can't sustain the population... the Earth certainly can and then some...
Sunburys@reddit
Don't worry, global population will keep increasing, as well the consumerism
Gertsky63@reddit
Malthusian nonsense
jonnieggg@reddit
Bollox
specialsymbol@reddit
Who would have thought
Carnir@reddit
We could support many times this of we just gave up meat. It's the easiest choice in the world.
a_valente_ufo@reddit
I'm genuinely curious to know what lifestyle is the most adequate for the Earth.
madcoins@reddit
a fully natural/sustainable one
Ok_Act_5321@reddit
thats not good for humans though. More like minimalistic with atmost 1 kid each family.
ghostcatzero@reddit
Well let's see, we currently feed 30 billion livestock daily. Imagine how much people and than some we'd be able to feed if we used all of that food meant for the livestock towards those starving??? Also if we stopped chopping down the forests in order to raise more livestock?
madcoins@reddit
a very good spotlight. Meat nor dairy is essential to human life like many people seem to believe.
ghostcatzero@reddit
Most humans have been taught for centuries to think it's the only way we can survive. It is not.
03263@reddit
If Ug get to eat cow, Grug want cow too.
leisurechef@reddit
2.5 is optimistic, running in ecological overshoot has degraded the natural carrying capacity
ishmetot@reddit
It takes about 5 acres of arable land per person to self-sustain on a fully vegetarian diet and 20-40 acres to self-sustain with livestock. The problem is that there are only about 3.7 billion acres of arable land on earth, which means we can only comfortably maintain a population of about 740 million using sustainable farming practices alone, and this is discounting the devastation to ecological systems if we were to achieve 100% land use. So there needs to be a push towards high density living and a heavy use of renewables for our energy inputs if we really want to solve the problem.
Uhh_JustADude@reddit
“Best I can do is 1.5 million”
leisurechef@reddit
Deal
binilvj@reddit
Research paper if anyone would like to read
GenderCriticalicious@reddit
if you haven't started already, now it's a great time to start supporting abortion rights and child free women
SpliceKnight@reddit
Casual reminder that the communist dream is unsustainable in the modern age. Because it requires a certain level of opulence at at minimum requires the population to be reduced so dramatically its probably inhumane to even think how it would occur.
sweetapples17@reddit
These people have no imagination. If we were smart we would live in jungle cities and people would be able to climb as part of daily life. We could fully intergrate with man made forest biomes and live among a fruitful ecosystem.
If you use permaculture techniques i.e. growing food in the ground, the understory, the canopy. You can pretty much feed a family off of like less than an acre. Look up Andrew Millison.
We have to start catering our lifestyles to our biology. Instead of to our base desires. Like we were meant to walk barefoot and be able to do a pull up to climb trees to escape predators, yet the average person can barely even hang from a bar.
That aside. The transition will be tough but we can support plenty of life if we can start living in harmony with nature. The amazing thing about biology is you can get more than you put in. Its all made to work together and we decided to do this maniacal technology stuff.
There are plenty of people who are leading by example already. Living in food forests, reclaiming deserts. There is hope! But maybe not for this generation or the next one lol
bipolarearthovershot@reddit
Dude the animals eat all my food. I leaned into permaculture so hard and the animals are starving near me so there is no balance. Potatoes and root crops? Dug up by mice. Seed planting? Mice. Hundreds of pounds of grapes? Stolen. Fruit trees? Taken. Berries? Bye to the birds.
bipolarearthovershot@reddit
The rich are going to start culling us aren’t they?
chickey23@reddit
Sure, if you're going to calculate the earths carrying capacity without non renewable resources you'll get numbers like that. Look at the strait of Hormuz situation. Fertilizer shipment is already a concern.
frequency-32@reddit
And yet we can visit places in the most populated country in the world, India, and still find most of the land unoccupied because the majority of people are living in the cities. And that we also have now discovered a way to make a single thing that we create out of sustainable materials.
Edser@reddit
Every time they bring up the birthrate is not keeping up to replace the current population, I lose brain cells. We are over 8bil people right now, but 20ish years ago we just hit 6bil as a record. There was no abundance that everyone in the world was being fed (even though we could have just like today), and we still had ads for sponsoring starving kids in Africa (even South Park mocked it). It is a sham both sides of the isle buy into for one reason, greed.
Interesting_Day_7734@reddit
That's Halairous. Man knows better than that how to survive. The destruction of man is man himself. Think what the population would be without all the deaths from wars.
pawsncoffee@reddit
But capitalism requires infinite growth I don’t get it isn’t this just the best and most natural system
vid_icarus@reddit
AT CURRENT CONSUMPTION RATES!!
There are more than enough resources on this planet to support all of us, we are just allocating them like junkie idiots.
Tiny-Sink-9290@reddit
Just keep in mind that we can EASILY feed the population. There is plenty of ways.. especially with vertical hydroponics/etc to grow plenty of food for everyone. We can purify water as well for drinking. It's not that we can't.. is that the oligarchs in charge of various nations to NOT want to keep on supporting the vast majority of humans. Which.. sadly to some degree is a sensible thing. We should have capped children to 1 per couple for 30+ years, then have a stint of 2 or 3 per couple for some years.. to balance things out. But without a single world power/govt/organization with a LOT more things in place and understood than we have today.. we'll never see that happen. Instead we're seeing the Oligarchs of the world building massive wealth, huge bunkers, etc.. to sustain them/immediate family/circle and watching AI, and more take over while watching more and more people unable to find work. The end result is going to be without a doubt massive violence, death, etc.. and I suspect truly that is what the oligarchs want.. to reduce the population by 90% or more world wide.. while AI/robots can do most of the work and with AI's improving capabilities, learn to build robots/automation and better ways to properly manage food and other resources with so few people around.
Call me crazy. That is what I believe will happen on the present course.
PaltryCharacter@reddit
Somebody should tell Indian and China
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
randyrando101@reddit
Start with India
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
OVER_9009@reddit
/r/thanosdidnothingwrong headline
stirtheturd@reddit
The only possible solution: procreate.
Yes thats right, can barely afford offspring as it is, but life finds a way! Especially when other humans fund the venture of large family when the economy can barely support one person. Keep them donations comin!
Buffmclargehuge69420@reddit
If we stopped food waste and actually ended world hunger etc I'm sure that we could sustain it its just currently we can't because capitalism
Slavicgoddess23@reddit
European folks already the lowest and slowing. Others need to catch up.
3d1thF1nch@reddit
Ohhhh, we fucked that number ages ago
undefeatedantitheist@reddit
..with our prevailing philosophy and systems of economics.
THE BIT THAT IS NEVER SAID.
vapemyashes@reddit
I volunteer to go to the moon
this_one_has_to_work@reddit
“We’re really sorry it’s come to this but the economy can’t take all of us and we going to have to restructure. There will be some layoffs from this life but remember it’s not us, it’s just the situation forcing this” - sincerely, The Billionaires
roughandreadyrecarea@reddit
Meanwhile in San Antonio Texas a newborn was found abandoned in a basket with they’re umbilical cord still attached…
hotcinnamonbuns@reddit
If we didn’t hoard everything in the northern hemisphere we could
Grantology@reddit
Comments in here are literally insane.
"ACTUALYYYYY ITS MORE LIKE 12!!!!!"
jmnugent@reddit
How are they wrong ?...
Population capacity of the Earth has less to do with the number of people,. and more to do with how those people choose to live. if 1 individual lives a very wasteful lifestyle, they could be wasting the amount of resources that would sustain 10 or 20 people.
If everyone lived frugally and efficiently,. the Earths carrying capacity is quite high.
Taylo@reddit
If we all live in 10 foot cubes and eat bug pulp and grain mash while lit by soy candlelight, we could sustain a ton of people, you're correct. But is squeezing the earth to as many people as possible with declining living standards what we should be aiming for?
jmnugent@reddit
Wouldnt have to be anything that extreme. All the estimates I’m seeing now say for 8 Billion people works out to about 1 acre per person. (about the size of a football field.
hardFraughtBattle@reddit
It's a self-correcting problem.
theycallmecliff@reddit
I think it's important to clarify what we mean when we use the word "Malthusian."
There are certainly people who leverage the term against anyone who questions growth, whether because they lack political imagination or want to excuse the status quo.
But I also think there's a more intellectually interesting thing occurring in these discussions that could genuinely be called Malthusian.
Malthus was a Christian pastor that wanted to abolish the poor laws. Two things stand out about his approach to me: he wanted to moralize about human nature as a whole, and his proposed actions in light of this moralizing had an undeniable class character.
When statistics about global population are given in perc capita terms, it obscures the sheer magnitude of class difference in the way people live their lives.
The vast majority of the global working poor are not nearly as responsible as the fraction of a percent of super bourgeoisie in terms of the destruction being wrought.
Yet cynically dooming about the need to decrease population rapidly will only end in these very same global working poor being most affected whether by war, pandemic, famine, or natural disasters.
Don't get me wrong: the cynicism is understandable. Doom looping about potential future scenarios and washing our hands of responsibility, especially as workers in the first world who have a foot in both camps, seems like common sense.
But it's also how the bourgeoisie wins. We may not have power over a lot of things right now as workers, but we do have the power (for now) to consider carefully how we talk about this issue and to scrutinize certain ways this population conversation is being framed.
We're not going to individual action or individual shame our way out of this. It's only fair that we're honest that per capita numbers slant the framing towards a Malthusian sort of moralizing that at once attempts to address human nature and make individual value judgements.
Except in our age, the arguments don't need to be explicit. In fact, because there is very little religious ground truth in the way that there was in the time of Malthus you wouldn't expect the moralizing to take the form of an explicit appeal at all.
If the outcome is the same, if cover is provided to those who benefit from obscuring how much more they have while disaster ramps up and up and up for those most disadvantaged, then a Malthusian end is one and the same.
SODY27@reddit
Do you all live in tiny boxes that you never leave? The US could hold and support the world’s population. You are insane if you believe this.
Physical_Ad5702@reddit
The US could physically hold 8.3 billion people but no way in hell is there enough arable land to feed 8.3 billion people here.
Not sure what you’re smoking…
OkNewspaper6271@reddit
This subreddit is (naturally) doomer-dominated so im not surprised people thing this is the case
Distinguishedflyer@reddit
500,000 ftfy. Planet is too degraded for 2.5 billion shitter units.
ElephantContent8835@reddit
It’s actually way less than that. 500 million is probably more like it.
HerbertMarshall@reddit
You got anything to back that up?
yosoyeloso@reddit
Georgia guide stones!
ElephantContent8835@reddit
Yes. Logic and a lot of time studying climate and hoomans.
hiccupboltHP@reddit
Okay awesome, any sources beyond “trust me bro”?
ElephantContent8835@reddit
Haha. Well- I read this number in an article 25 or 30 years ago- I don’t remember what it was but it was either a climate or anthropology journal- things I’ve read, done, seen during the subsequent years have only supported it.
HerbertMarshall@reddit
You got anything to back that up?
Ilikeyellowjackets@reddit
Thsi whole interaction
kingfofthepoors@reddit
My number is closer to about a billion evenly spread.
Portalrules123@reddit (OP)
Yeah, I figured that even a study as “doomer” as this one is trying to be optimistic to not be accused of excessive doom.
thenikolaka@reddit
Yes and the sun will kill you if you don’t engineer a solution. So what we need to innovate.
syahir77@reddit
Study by bill gates
adanskeez@reddit
We need more babies dammit! Think of the shareholders
OstensibleFirkin@reddit
The economy is not going to like to hear this. We need a minimum birth rate for “growth.” Maybe AI will solve it.
InitialAd4125@reddit
Growth is overrated espically when most people never seen any of this so called "growth".
KCGD_r@reddit
Sustainable population ~2.5 billion people
Current population ~8 billion people
... shit
Madame_Snatch@reddit
Wheres Thanos when you need him
modern_medicine_isnt@reddit
Sorry but no. This planet is absurdly huge. Ther is enough habitable land such that each person can have 1 to 2 acres. Dense cities in the US can have 500 people per acre. So there is a lot of land leftover. I'm not saying we should use all the land, but you can't say we hit the limit of what the planet can support. It's not even close.
The amount of food wasted alone could feed another 2 or 3 billion.
If you look at the article. No real data. Just claims that we are using up o The planets stores of oil and such. But not even data saying that at the current rate we will run out in... thats because it is very far away.
Most likely what he did for oil was figure out how long it takes it to form and divided that to get how much would form in a year. Then figures how many people that can support. Sounds reasonable. Except that oil was forming for hundreds of millions of years ago, and is still forming today. But humans have only been using it for thousands of years. So there is plenty stocked up. And there is a lot we haven't even found yet. On top of that, we are getting more efficient with it. They aren't even really trying to reduce overall usage because there is still plenty. If they actually tried, they could do a lot better.
Odd_Awareness1444@reddit
The advice from the now destroyed Georgia Guidestones was a world population of 500,000,000. I think it was accurate.
DCrebuilds@reddit
This is such alarmist bullshit
Euphoric-Canary-7473@reddit
Note that Bradshaw says it's because of the way we are currently consuming and producing, and because the population grows, the population rate climbs and then there are "more people meant more labor, more innovation, more energy use, and faster development – which supported still more growth. Then the pattern broke." They say consumtion and population interact, but that there comes a point where population rises even if consumption per capita doesn't.
Now my question for the article is simple: where do you think the population came from in the first place? Not from production, but from the system it enables and incentivices in the first place. That is, capitalism. So in a sense overpopulation, though a growing problem becoming more relevant than consumption, doesn't actually rival the even bigger problem of the contradicitons of capital.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it.
Forsaken-Newt-9286@reddit
"overpopulation" is a trojan horse for our white supremacist ruling class. They need us to think there are to many mouths to feed so that way all the austere pragmatists turn a blind eye when they start to genocide the immigrants rushing in from the global south, which are only fleeing from destruction caused by our exploitation.
Even if it is an issue that needs to be addressed on some level (which I am willing to entertain), I have no faith that a society based on capitalist ideals will ever get close without some level of extraordinary violence.
redbark2022@reddit
Carrying capacity is 10 billion.
The "if everyone is consumers" is doing all the heavy lifting here.
Stop animal agriculture and disposables and energy waste and suddenly Carrying capacity jumps to 25 billion.
Extrapolation is dumb. Consumerism is dumb. Capitalism is dumb.
madcoins@reddit
I was taught 9 billion. Either way we are dangerously close.
Swordf1sh_@reddit
Garbage clickbait website with sensational headlines and claims to drive clicks. I’m so sick of this overpopulation angle being posted here.
While there’s a critique of the perpetual growth/consumption cycle nestled in there, I think fear mongering about overpopulation serves to distract and muddy the waters in the discussions of what will actually lead to collapse. As others have said, this argument speaks more to the wasteful and inefficient nature of the global ‘economy’ than it does to any realistic collapse due to an overload of earth’s ‘carrying capacity’.
omgwtfm8@reddit
3c0 f45c15t slop
Disapointing
hedgehogssss@reddit
If people could only stop breeding like crazy 😰
GuayFuhks88@reddit
Whenever this was brought up when I was in college we got admonished for being Malthusian
PeaOk5697@reddit
I have an idea but it's controversial
SpiritualSoup7524@reddit
Same. I'll definitely get banned if I said it.
PeaOk5697@reddit
You can be banned for a reasonable solution, meanwhile no one can come up with any other solution to save the planet lol
VermontGrandpa@reddit
I always imagined my future with kids in a pseudo-idyllic world resembling somehow to the Shire in LotR. Problem is that that “Shire” is not the one at the beginning of the movies, but more likely to be the Shire at the end of the book… Also, most likely I could not even afford to have kids.
StatementBot@reddit
This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses:
Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into.
Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist.
Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar.
This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, view the full statement available in the wiki.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Portalrules123:
SS: Related to overconsumption, overpopulation, and resource collapse as a new study has estimated that the global sustainable “carrying capacity” for humanity is around 2.5 billion people, well short of the roughly 8.3 billion we currently have. The authors argue that the only reason we have been able to sustain more than that for decades is our rampant use of unrenewable and therefore unsustainable resources like fossil fuels. It’s likely that, if humanity wanted to truly live in balance with nature, even 2.5 billion may be pushing it. Basically, it is undeniable that the Earth simply cannot sustain the current rate of consumption that our rapid growth has caused, and things would only get worse if we tried to provide everyone on Earth with a “first-world” consumerist lifestyle. So, I would argue that this research firmly supports the hypothesis that overpopulation is indeed an issue, and would likely lead to ecological and then societal collapse even if climate change magically stopped right now. Expect religious people and especially economists to continue denying this and arguing for infinite growth even as Earth’s vital systems start to totally shut down. Oh and just getting rid of billionaires, while still a good thing to do, would only scratch the surface of this problem.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1segpnv/earth_can_no_longer_sustain_the_global_human/oepqyp9/
Kaje26@reddit
god, you know, please don’t give billionaires ideas