This argument has been made, again and again, over the past 200(?) years. Every time flattening out of the population growth and innovations in food production saved the day.
I’m not saying that for sure this will happen again this time, I’m just saying, maybe a mass purging of people to stay below the sustainable amount isn’t a good idea.
Which are now one of the driving forces of climate change.
That’s definitely an extremely bad idea.
But putting your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la is dumb as well. Every idiot can understand exponential growth on a static planet isn’t going to work in the (not so ) long run.
We should try to curb the growth of the population. Not by ‘culling’ people, but by increasing their standard of living so they don’t have to rely on many children to care for them in their old days. Having as many children as possible is still the only way to be looked after when old in many parts of the world.
It’s just as well that I suggest how to do this then. Giving people the means to choose has proven to be more effective than a list of "Thou Shalt Not"s.
I don’t see the advantage of ignoring blood and soil types who want death squads. It’s Popper’s Paradox all over again.
We can attack both ecofascism and neo-liberals who misuse the term ecofascism for their own unsustainable desires, some of whom have ecofascist leanings themselves.
Certainly… it’s good not to ignore those. However I see the word eco-fascist used more often to describe bona-fide politicians (often by right-wing newspapers) than actual right-wing groups. But maybe that’s more of a thing in the U.S. than europe?
I think we largely agree, though I object to the labeling of the problematic exponential growth of the number of people as 'a myth.
It might not be the most pressing problem right now, but it should not be swept under the carpet and will have to deal with it sooner rather than later.
I admit I don’t really know how. Making people richer seems to to lead to less population growth, so that’s probably the best way. That alone is probably not enough, though, as even in lots of western (rich) countries the population is still growing. China tried the one-child policy, an it has it’s own set of nasty backlashes on the chinese society, so that’s probably not the way to go either.
In any case I agree completely that blaming the third world for climate change is both silly and useless.
The best way to drop birth rates is to emancipate women. Give women full autonomy over their bodies and access to education and options about their lives… Amazingly, when given choices, women tend to NOT choose to put their lives at risk by having 10 children, even if they enjoy the tradition role of wife and mother.
But again, the problem here is out of control consumption especially in the West more than any other issue. Constant growth will only lead to more enviromental problems, so the ideology needs to switch to sustainability.
This. And not only to drop birth rates, but to adress a whole bunch of other problems as well.
In general, education may be the key. However, all the decision-makers are, in general, incredibly well “educated”, so the term isn’t the best fitting. They are still an important part of the problem. I hesitate to use it, but wisdom seems the part which is lacking. We need more wise women, especially.
That’s the most important one, indeed. I’m not sure it is enough on it’s own though. But that alone will probably get us 95% of the way.
It does amaze me that the last 10 years the number of emancipated, well educated women with 4+ children seems to have grown. At least in my direct vicinity. There’s a sort of romantic ‘rediscovery’ of motherhood going on it seems. It’s a bit discouraging…
Amen to that!
correlation is not causation
True, but in some sciences it’s nearly all you have…
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