PeopleView.txt

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 track me upvote vote downvote award share avatar dasnoob mo ago do these people think that we can just increase our food production capabilities into infinity my friend there are a lot of people that think oil is an infinite resource and we will always find more this includes my father who has a ms in petroleum geology and should very well no better between water shortages and climate change i think we are going to see mass die offs similar to what happens in the ministry for the future that book was terrible by the way upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar pippopozzato mo ago wait so you re saying there are limits to growth lol upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar fitbootyqueenfan mo ago we re breeding ourselves to death next time some ignorant person asks why you have no kids say humans are breeding themselves to death upvote downvote reply reply award share more reply more replies quigonjonathan mo ago people who say it s just a distribution issue confuse me when we look at things like incredible overfishing soil nutrition stripping and the reliance on fossil fuels and other limited inputs for large scale agriculture maybe if we incredibly overhauled our eating and agriciltural practices wonder if anyone s done the numbers there if they can be done upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar rdwaveharmonic mo ago the overfishing issue is gonna be ugly when enough fisheries collapse upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar hopefulgoat mo ago this is the correct line of thinking yes it is true we currently produce enough raw calories to feed every single person on earth twice over or so however those calories are entirely and truly dependent on the use of fossil fuels which are an increasingly scarce resource and destroying our environment if you take away diesel powered farm equipment bunker fuel cargo ships petrochemical based food packaging and storage and the most important one of all fossil fuel based artificial fertilizers how much food could we grow you don t have to do the math to know that billion is not sustainable sure we can feed everyone for a while but if we give up fossil fuels we cannot although climate change may very lower crop yields so much that we can t feed everyone anyway even with the unconstrained use of fossil fuels upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies more replies avatar the joker s game promoted got hooked on fmvs and finally found a demo to try learn more store steampowered com thumbnail image got hooked on fmvs and finally found a demo to try jr avatar jesuschrist jr mo ago i think the masses don t really give overpopulation much thought and for most people alive today this is just how things have always been none of them have had to seriously consider food scarcity there are also those who are more aware and just assume that we ll engineer our way out of our problems again when we start hitting the next production ceiling feels like wishful thinking to me to just assume everything will work out without anything to base it on i m in a field that is heavily involved with crop production i ve been to conferences and seen the latest advances and what s in the pipeline all of the improvements that are being worked on are incredibly incremental scraping very small efficiencies at great cost most of the industry is focused on leveraging ai and automation to get something on the order of yield improvements and the costs to implement these technologies in the real world are really prohibitive at this point for most crops upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies avatar tearakan mo ago it wont reach billion by actuaries expect billions to die to famine war and other climate change hazards and those are actuaries not random people not idiot governments that are paid to water down their reports upvote downvote reply reply award share cultural answer mo ago i had to scroll this far down upvote downvote reply reply award share more reply deleted mo ago sometimes i feel like the limits to growth should be a mandatory read for anyone who wants to join this subreddit upvote downvote reply reply award share critterjackpot cake icon mo ago hah yup if anyone sees my lil comment here limits to growth is available for free online pdf epub html kindle versions here is audio it s text to speech but don t want to leave out my audio preferrers ltg library avails and recommend donella meadows just broadly she was a great communicator tysm do not want to seem like an overeager weirdo but this book is important upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar grose mo ago i dunno but it seems to me like the vast majority of human culture at present moment is a hypertrophic outgrowth of base level primate biological urges so people want any excuse to reinforce the notion that they can keep making babies forever and using tech as a solution to prevent destruction of the earth system the mass mind of the human social superorganism is in for a giant bitchslap from gaia upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies gloriousdawn mo ago collapse is death by hockey sticks and one of them is driving all the others yes it would be better for humanity to voluntarily reduce energy usage raw materials extraction plastic production waste and a dozen other metrics per capita but realistically the only way global figures will go down significantly one day is because some catastrophic population collapse in the future will impact them all there s no ethical way to address overpopulation but even when people stop voluntarily making babies because they can t afford to raise them anymore what happens we have the wealthy elites pushing dystopian policies in the us to maintain population growth at all cost and especially at the cost of women s rights upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar doombadadoom mo ago of pregnancies worldwide are unintended the birthrates in western developped or densed saturated overcrowded countries are also falling off there is more and more people that simply dont want children if we had a rate of child per woman then by the end of the century we would be billion upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar lordnacho mo ago people dismiss it because they survived eventually someone will be wrong at some point there is no smarter way to organise everything that is within our energy budget and thermodynamics is the law so it will happen logically that there s a limit whether we re close is a bit more debatable if we know there s a lot of inefficiency we can point at that for how to improve things upvote downvote reply reply award share daviddjg mo ago survivorship bias potash is also a limiting agent besides emissions upvote downvote reply reply award share general salami mo ago the haber bosch process is one of the greatest ecological disasters in history as far as i m concerned it didn t save lives it just created the enabling conditions for mass overpopulation beyond the earth s carrying capacity so we basically put ourselves in ecological debt which is now coming due people don t like talking about it because it acknowledges that human life isn t the most sacred thing ever rather that we re part of an ecosystem and should not pervert it to save everyone people will argue it s about distribution of resourcing good luck getting humanity to equally distribute resources let alone consume less i m so sick of living in a society that promotes coddling humanity at all costs nature was trying to cull the population and we biohacked the whole thing as though we re smarter than a natural system perfected over billions of years natural law is the most just ethical system around humanity made up their own system that is wholly out of sync with nature the further we go the worse it gets upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies bugabooandtwo mo ago there s definitely an effort from capitalists and the ownership class to try and make any discussions about overpopulation taboo easiest way to make anything scare and thus more valuable is to increase the numbers of people who want it upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar gyirin mo ago need more slaves too literally the average person doesn t know the first thing about agriculture i mention this often and the fact our soil is degraded and literally has fewer nutrients because the soil is cooked from overuse and reliance on nitrogen fertilizers and machinery intensive farming techniques and people look at me like i have two heads people don t see agriculture and therefore don t think about it but we ve been borrowing from tomorrow to feed today for nearly years now and people seem to think that s normal and we can simply keep improving production and yields upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar mem mo ago you missed a huge piece of the puzzle haber bosch process for making fertilizer in upvote downvote reply reply award share race avatar logical race mo ago edited mo ago replying with my favorite dark fact more people are starving and food insecure in the world today than existed on the planet before the haber bosch process even if you want to make the claim everyone on the planet was food insecure before ridiculous mass starvation is a largely modern agricultural phenomenon more individuals are suffering today than there were individuals to begin with we live under a progress myth upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies avatar ze wendriner mo ago we can t supply billion either on a sustainable way especially with our outlandish expectations upvote downvote reply reply award share cultural answer mo ago from this very sub edit extra words deleted upvote downvote reply reply award share beersandburgers mo ago this indeed a considerable chance of billion folks less around according to those who educate those who work at f i lloyd s of london swiss re or munich re if they don t worry about a world population of billion i don t they obviously have totally different worries as do i upvote downvote reply reply award share deleted mo ago competitive shock mo ago my dad worked with farmers yes they think they can grow infinite he claimed that there are under developed pieces of land that can be cultivated the problem with conservative mindsets is that they live in the now there is no forethought sure you can have a tax cut now but your children pay for it sure you can grow that there now but land is finite upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar mem mo ago the worlds aquifers are being drained some faster than others more farming more demand for fresh water faster race to the bottom of the aquifers upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar throwawaybrm mo ago lucky with green revolution the total destruction of the environment upvote downvote reply reply award share physical ad mo ago the only statistic you need to know is that it takes calories of energy diesel fossil fuel derived fertilizers to produce calorie of food it s wholly unsustainable by a ratio of water scarcity is the chef s kiss of wasf upvote downvote reply reply award share ad avatar thick ad mo ago you answered yourself people dismiss malthus because we got very lucky with the green revolution upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar ghostwoods mo ago edited mo ago this will get brigaded to death but the denial of malthus is a simple combo of blind hopium and a type of knee jerk over simplistic marxism that insists it s always capitalism to blame no matter the question and no matter that capitalism as marx defined it hasn t existed for seventy years bottom line doesn t make the slightest difference whether we magically go globally vegan eco communist or not earth is a closed system closed systems have limits and overpopulation is always always going to be a merciless threat would our population limit be higher without oil meat or money personally i doubt it i think giving up haber bosch would more than wipe out any potential gains from losing animal husbandry even ignoring the way that climate change is already screwing up crop growth and pretending the comparative unhealthiness of veganism over vegetarianism yrs shorter lifespan below vegetarianism on average doesn t exist upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar tuneglum mo ago read the omnivores delimma sp by pollan he talks about haber bosch basically without it the earth can grow enough food for max around billion that s assuming all productive land being farmed sustainably yet intensively the only way we go back is if ths of us die upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar boneyfingers mo ago i agree entirely any rival economic system would likely have destroyed the biosphere on the same scale as capitalism has except maybe less efficiently a quick look at what mao did to sparrows or the soviets did to the aral sea will show how communism would have lead us to the same crisis by a different path as bakunin might have said were he here today when the biosphere is destroyed by fossil fuels it brings no comfort to know that they are the peoples fossil fuels upvote downvote reply reply award share ulyks mo ago earth is very much not a closed system there is a massive constant influx of energy from the sun fossil fuels are just concentrated solar energy that our primitive machines burn upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies avatar klikketykat mo ago some people seem to think a crowded world is a better world especially if it s their own country i ve never understood their lack of appreciation for nature and the sheer pleasure of being able to get away from the crowd upvote downvote reply reply award share thehistorian mo ago i don t believe those population growth estimates to be realistic in the face of what we re seeing with the rate of increase of climate chaos we ll never get to b before it starts declining upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar bristlybits mo ago all i know is there s twice as many people as when i was born there s half as many wild living things as when i was born the book that soylent green was based on had a different punchline than the movie the punchline was the population of the united states has reached million and it was a terrible thing in the book the worst scenario it s called make room make room if you d like to read it the events in the movie are meant to be a sequel to the book upvote downvote reply reply award share prsnep mo ago if malthus was wrong why does the un predict there will be an increase in migration due to food insecurity in the future upvote downvote reply reply award share litnu mo ago the world has enough food for everybody but food in europe won t feed people in middle east unless we distribute food and migration wouldn t help the people if there wasn t enough food in the place the migrate to upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies omcgoo mo ago jrssr mo ago nature will always maintain its equilibrium naturally the earth herself will address overpopulation if necessary upvote downvote reply reply award share cultural answer mo ago nature always wins upvote downvote reply reply award share pootle mo ago nature bats last upvote downvote reply reply award share lustig avatar kill lustig mo ago i honestly think most people just dont care if a billion people die of starvation it will happen mostly in other countries full of poor people who are currently suffering in many preventable ways and they dont care about that either in fact i think many people deep down in their lizard brains recognize the very idea of billions of other people as an inherent threat to their own survival they will never care about this unless its a real direct threat to themselves personally and by then it will be too late upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar mem mo ago population is a sensitive subject for good reason that said there is a huge difference between talking about ecological risk in a scientifically solid valid manner and driving some sort of racial agenda lately it has become a popular idea to eat the rich due to their excessive per capita resource consumption and emissions poorer countries get a full pass by the folks doing this there is nothing good moral about that pass because those countries will slam headlong into different types of overshoot afghanistan which has banned birth control is facing a terrible and worsening water shortage a rapidly growing population slamming into fully depleted aquifers and reduced rainfall is a huge humanitarian crisis unfolding before our eyes in nigeria pollution of freshwater is a huge and worsening problem exacerbated by a growing population and a weak focus on water infrastructure drought in parts of the country is worsening religious conflict between the christians and muslims and between the herders and farmers humans have a very irrational posture towards family size basically people can should have as many children as they want or god gives them this is unfortunate as there is no kindness in conceiving children inside an overpopulated ecologically overloaded ecosystem ditto for ethiopia b anyone says well what about the rich countries like the us who are i would vote for any measure that sharply steps up taxes for excessive above average consumption it is disgraceful that we the us continues to collectively pretend that we aren t creating a catastrophic eco disaster for our descendants and our descendants means those locally as well as our brothers and sisters and cousins and extended human family across the globe upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar xdeadbeef mo ago as an american i can assure the issue is far less overpopulation in the developing countries and much more the overconsumption and waste in mine literal obesity epidemic because we have so much excess calories and use so much energy driving everywhere the amazon gets clear cut so my fatass and fellow compatriots can eat burgers that we got out of the drive thru upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar darkpsychicenergy mo ago the vast majority of brazil s beef is consumed domestically in for example they produced million metric tons and exported million of what they export china and hong kong are the main importers the us is actually the biggest global producer of beef we do fuck all kinds of things up but brazilians are entirely responsible for their own destruction of the amazon upvote downvote reply reply award share orangecrack mo ago overpopulation is an aggravator for all our existing problems but isn t a primary source for many of them if i were to break it down here are the reasons why i think most people aren t concerned with overpopulation there is no widespread reporting or scientific studies supporting the idea that our population right now is a serious thread to our way of life this is a taboo subject to bring up because of eugenics history and ethnic cleanses that are typically done in the name of population reduction we are currently facing a demographic crisis in most countries where the birth rate is either below or way below replacement levels for the current population levels meaning we expect a crash in the next years in terms of our ability to support the infrastructure and people still alive that will be too old to look after themselves all economic models want an increasing population to sustain growth and push forward with advancements in science and technology children are our future it s fine to say objectively that our population is too high but there is nothing ethical we can do about it and the problem is slowly fixing itself society as a whole doesn t widely accept that we are facing near term collapse and no one wants to guilt a specific individual even if the agree as a whole population should go down upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar monkeysknowledge mo ago because we ve already reached peak birth rate decades ago birth rates continue to drop and the global population is expected to peak around which is within a human lifespan so what are we supposed to do forced sterilization mass murder look we re going to peak at billion humans it s the ones flying around in private jets and driving vehicles the size of military tanks to pick up a gallon of milk that are the problem we can make room for billion we don t have a choice upvote downvote reply reply award share deleted mo ago so what are we supposed to do of pregnancies are unplanned no one other than capitalists whining about falling birth rates will care if we shrink this upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies metalsteptng mo ago no we can t make room for billion people what and where are they going to eat with the current climate change crisis that is projected to worsen over the next decade or so upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies avatar mixmastablongjesus mo ago edited mo ago we can make room for billion at the expense of million species of other living creatures and organisms many of which are critically endangered very anthropocentric upvote downvote reply reply award share magicjava mo ago exactly it s a population level math problem it s kind of out of our control at this point there will almost not be overpopulation issues in years upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar digitalhuk mo ago i think people avoid or dismiss the problem of overpopulation because of the very dark ways it has been discussed by some people and how overpopulation concerns have been used to justify or imply support for mass death of specific people groups this of course does not change the fact that overpopulation is a real thing that happens in nature and is a limit humanity faces i think talking about it in the context of overshoot has been more useful to me in discussions with people there is also a lot of normalcy bias we are all prone to i have never gone to a gas station and it has been out of gas for an extended period of time in my entire life so even though i know gas is finite i m not inclinded to ignore it same thing with water and food there is also a lot of neoliberal capitalism pushing consumption and growth for financial bottom lines all around us in culture at every level across the vast majority of the world their profit is directly undermined by acknowledging the sheer unsustainability of the western lifestyle and limitless population increases upvote downvote reply reply award share public avatar mindless public mo ago much like the other comments concerning this as not really legitimate the modelling for most overpopulation stops at additionally when they ve included factors pertaining to the social determinants of health into their predictive modelling for overpopulation they see that when women s rights contraception being key access to healthcare education shelter food water clothing etc is factored in and are provided our populations start to drop we also have case studies concerning this happening in real time there are many countries that are dropping below their replacement rates most of this is happening in countries that significantly address the social determinants of health furthermore as others are saying we also have an abundance of calories available but due to capitalism these calories are not equally distributed with the global north having access to and consuming more calories than the global south much like all resources pertaining to the necessities of life it comes down to a prioritization in allocation of said resources the global north and particularly the in the global north but also the majority of the population engaging in this passively as well hoard a vast majority of the resources but this is not to say that it can t become concerning the less those social determinants of health are addressed then populations may not decrease and there is a concerted effort by the currently to decrease even more so allocation of resources that address the social determinants of health capitalism requires more and more bodies to consume and consume while also creating the very things we consume they can t experience infinite growth concerning the consumption of their products if there aren t people to consume them or make them so it looks like they are establishing policies to reduce coverage of social determinants of health to potentially increase the populations so that they can continue to experience growth the self eating nature of capitalism is on full display in what appears to be this late stage of capitalism upvote downvote reply reply award share public avatar mindless public mo ago it s also why we are seeing many billionaires elon being the most vocal immensely concerned about a lack of reproduction and a lowering of population capitalism to grow requires more and more and more particularly it needs more and more and more people to create for them and to consume population decreases significantly threaten the longevity of capitalisms existence and we are seeing a concerted effort to create and pass policies that reduce access to resources that address the social determinants of health to increase populations however they re clearly stupid as another aspect of capitalism they utilize to increase their growth is reducing the consumer power of the population they may pass policy that increases populations which is worrisome but if we the consumers don t have the funds to purchase products due to their efforts to increase prices the system will collapse they will engage as we are seeing in mass layoffs initially to address this lack of growth and unfortunately for everyone that will breed massive discontent and i m not sure what that future discontent will look like i have a feeling there will be mass migration and ever increasing violence especially as climate change ravages the planet and continues to disrupt supply chains that capitalists rely on and once again we are seeing those in power trying to address this trumps obsession with bringing everything back to the states for production has to be partly in response to the weakening of supply chains and collapse of production in the global south they ve utilized for stocking the shelves their answer instead of redistributing predictably is shunting everyone back into the factories to produce and bringing it back to the mother land as supply chains weaken and eventually collapse due to production collapse in the global south i do truly believe we are seeing the slow slow death of this system what concerns me is what will replace that as we are currently seeing an embrace not just by the of fascism masses of people are willing to support fascist policies to ensure their access to resources that address the social determinants of health and i m concerned that we are in for decades of fascist embrace of policy by the people i m hoping this doesn t become the case but it is looking worrisome to say the least upvote downvote reply reply award share omcgoo mo ago edited mo ago people in western countries are being sold so many excess calories that they re waning under an obesity epidemic on a logical level look at energy conservation energy cannot be destroyed and more of it is pumped into our atmosphere by the sun s light each day we only need the means through distribution to turn that energy into edible calories distribution is the problem not the pure amount of energy in the system if anything we have too much of that poor countries cant afford desalination green housing pipeline infrastructure power generation mechanisation etc etc that is a capitalism problem our food systems are extremely inefficient just look at how much feed is used to sustain livestock populations if everyone went vegan tomorrow we d have enough excess food for approx a higher population upvote downvote reply reply award share avatar ihadenough op mo ago oh please tell me how are we going to get water to afghanistan and from where kabul with million people is running out of water already how about when the population increases to million or million some countries have already surpassed their water and food production capabilities and the few countries having a surplus cannot ship it thousands of miles on an unprecedented scale upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies janglysack mo ago i expect you re a vegan then right mate upvote downvote reply reply award share more replies avatar yinsotheakuma mo ago most folks who aren t collapse aware aren t believing in any particular sort of collapse folks who are collapse aware don t take overpopulation arguments seriously for the same reason we don t take arguments about the integrity of womens sports seriously when they re made by transphobes or complaints about flying superpowered aliens seriously when they re made by lex luthor the parties involved usually want their solution and only care about the problem insomuch as they can get their solution implemented upvote downvote reply reply award share valixx mo ago avatar much good mo ago because productive capacity hasn t been the issue for a while it s been distribution malthus line of thinking is the same as eugenicists