If you had half as many humans in the world, but they all lived in suburbs, it would be much worse for the environment than having twice as many humans but they all live in cities.
Compare America to India. If Americans lived the way Indians do, the population would be absolutely fine. So if you want to solve overpopulation problems, stop the American style suburbs before you worry about the actual population.
Actual Indian here, please DO NOT live the way Indians live in India. The worst unplanned urban sprawl and urban density and squatting and squalor and slums :-(
If you are referring to the Ancient Civilization of local produce and local distribution and local Kingdom Tithes to the Empire while living in villages and the concentrating political, commercial and military power in the major cities. Education “institutes” in deep forest with no “fees” but labor for classes. Since that type of Civilization did once exist and thrived before being wiped out by repeated invasions and conquerors. Most definitely there were social and technology issues, but the slow pace of development did not destroy the landscape.
Medicine, Technology, Transportation, Global Trade need tempering with ecological ethical and sustainable standards of implementation, research and development.
Yeah, I’m not idolizing the actual conditions of India, just pointing out an exception to what the person above is talking about.
My ideal society would be a solarpunk version of soviet block housing with tons of bike paths and trams and high speed intercity rail. Cars and meat would be banned, but everyone would have gigabit fiber internet and induction stovetops. Also the thermal and sonic insulation would be fantastic
Soviet blocks are definitely better than urban sprawl when the maintenance and facilities are top-notch.
Taking the single issue of Transportation pollution, when India was in lockdown during covid, we had pollution-free skies, and lo-and-behold the regular rains and normal weather patterns not seen for more than 40 or 50 years returned ! Human transport pollution is the worst in India.
One of the first things Indian/foreign companies did was force workers to mandatorily return to office locations which increases transportation pollution by the bazillions as vehicles are needed to shuttle people, materials and maintenance for everything. And all these corporations talk the big talk of how ESG they are.
So you want us to somehow magically have the greenhouse gas emissions of an Indian, but think we can just have a high standard of living by having Soviet-style housing blocks (famous for being bleak and depressing)? That does not seem grounded in reality.
Edit: and meat is one of the few things I can eat. Not giving that up. Humans have eaten meat since before civilization. It’s a clear sign that overpopulation is a major issue that something that humans have done for eons is suddenly a problem.
For eons, most humans died between the ages of 0 and 1. Before we had modern medicine, we just accepted it and moved on. In many cultures, you wouldn’t bother to name a kid until its first or second birthday, to make the grieving process easier. Now, most babies don’t die. Cows don’t have to die for us either.
Sure but all those humans need an insane amount of farmland that dwarfs the amount of land they need for housing. And that’s ignoring meat consumption.
With a huge population, beef consumption is insane and is destroying the world.
That amount of farmland is a lot less if you’re not raising livestock and throwing out perfectly good food because it isn’t profitable. A vegan socialist society has a much higher population ceiling than a carnist capitalist society.
Yeah, in a tribal or medieval society. The math is very different in an industrialised society. The point where the equation really starts changing is when there isn’t enough space for all the animals to pasture, so instead of eating grass, the livestock are fed energy dense produce like corn grown on a different farm. Get rid of the cows and feed the corn to the people, and you’ll use a tiny fraction of the amount of land, water, and energy.
Since when Scotland and New Zealand are tribal and medieval societies? Or maybe France and Italy are tribal and medieval? There’s never a point when growing crops is better than growing meat. That’s a myth peddled by the sugar industry.
Australia has roughly the same amount of land as America, and a tenth the population. The Australian meat industry is able to be less subsidized than the American meat industry because of all the extra land. If you want to talk about overpopulation, Australia is one of the last places you should be looking. It has the fourth lowest population density in the world. In America, farmers need to grow corn to feed the cows, and they need extra money from the government to afford to do that. Australia can economically afford to eat meat, but America can’t. And India sure as hell can’t.
Why? Who decided that there aren’t supposed to be this many humans? We just need to accept that humans exist and work with that. Unless your solution is genocide and mass sterelization. And historically, richer nations paradoxically breed less, which is pretty unnatural IMO but seems like the solution to overpopulation: feed and educate.
The Earth has carrying capacity limits. I think we’re probably over that, temporarily, mostly because of fossil fuels. We turn fossil fuels into energy and food, degrading that environment and decreasing the Earth’s carrying capacity at the same time. It’s like we’re playing a game of Jinga to push population higher at the expense of our foundation.
What happens when rich nations become poorer? The world’s current predominant economic system cannot function without growth. What will the elites do to maintain the status quo? Perhaps push for banning abortion, contraceptives, and taking away women’s rights and autonomy?
It’s amazing how many people I talk to about overpopulation simply that we get 50% of the land (or more!) and the rest of all other animals get to fight over the rest.
I don’t have all the answers, it’s like saying I want candy and not knowing how to make it.
That said, maybe something like a tax on children, free contraceptives, free sterilization, free abortion. Pay people when they reach 45 if they don’t have kids. Robot caregivers for elder care in a decreasing population.
Here, I have a couple examples to kind of, illustrate why, despite the common sentiment, antinatalism, and malthusianism, inherently, like, just straight up, don’t make any sense. This is all based on back of the napkin math that I did a while ago, and I don’t want to redo the numbers, so take it with a grain of salt maybe, but, yeah.
Okay, so, not really taking into account consumption or supply chain, which are major factors, you could fit the entire population of earth in one city the size of about one and a quarter rhode islands, if you had the population density of kowloon. Now, kowloon has retroactively been shat on as having a low quality standard of living, which is partially true, there were leaks everywhere, it was run by the mob, yadda yadda, but there’s nothing inherently problematic with that level of density, there. You could easily expand that to, say, two rhode islands, or three, right, and that would cover an insanely small portion of the earth’s surface while also being more than enough for everyone to live.
On the other hand, if you divided up the earth based on only habitable zones and arable land, you’d get about 2.5 acres per person, which I think also accounts for the elderly and children. To me, that sounds like probably 2.5x more than I would ever need in a lifetime, especially once we kind of tally up all the savings that we can get at scale, at mass production, and then maybe take costs for transportation.
We also, never, never ever take into account the amount of land management which was being done by the various natives of all their lands before colonialism kind of came in and fucked everything up. We have this conception of nature as being some kind of like, inherent good entity that humans can only ever destroy with their presence. A kind of untouched garden of eden that we should basically never touch. As being like, inherently sacred, or having some inherent value, even, to the point where we anthropomorphize it. “Mother nature”. We have this view of humans as also being completely separate from nature, as being an aberration, rather than being a part of it. I think these are both mistakes. We have to view humans as being a part of nature, and we have to start viewing nature as existing everywhere, rather than just being something that you minorly interface with when you go for a hike. Our built environment is part of nature, our decision to plant exclusively male trees that will give off a shit ton of pollen which covers all the windows and makes everything super shitty all spring so we don’t have fruit, that’s a part of nature. So are the raccoons and possums and stray cats and dogs and pigeons and weeds and other things which we see as being invasive but also simultaneously as having no real habitat anymore.
The real solution, I think, is only going to come about when humans collectively start to conceptualize and take accountability for what they go around and do, rather than just sort of, pawning off all responsibility for everything, and cooking up some apocalyptic reality where it’d just be better off if we didn’t exist at all. The genie is out of the bottle. Even to conceptualize of us as being “the problem”, as though there is a singular kind of problem, is a kind of anthropocentrism, and a kind of anthropomorphizing of nature.
I also assume I don’t need to really discuss how like, the idea that we’re currently doing everything in the most efficient way, is a little bit overconfident, and takes everything at a kind of, unchanging face value. As though we exist in the long arc of history with a kind of inevitability, rather than a random happenstance.
This is why I get so mad when people say “we don’t have an overpopulation problem, we have a resource allocation problem”.
No. There are not supposed to be this many fucking humans. Where the fuck are the animals supposed to live???
We need to return to preindustrial population levels so the animals can too
Wildlife is now only 4% of the mammalian life on the planet, by mass. The rest is livestock and humans. https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html
Exactly. That’s insane.
Return to monke.
deleted by creator
If you had half as many humans in the world, but they all lived in suburbs, it would be much worse for the environment than having twice as many humans but they all live in cities.
Compare America to India. If Americans lived the way Indians do, the population would be absolutely fine. So if you want to solve overpopulation problems, stop the American style suburbs before you worry about the actual population.
Actual Indian here, please DO NOT live the way Indians live in India. The worst unplanned urban sprawl and urban density and squatting and squalor and slums :-(
If you are referring to the Ancient Civilization of local produce and local distribution and local Kingdom Tithes to the Empire while living in villages and the concentrating political, commercial and military power in the major cities. Education “institutes” in deep forest with no “fees” but labor for classes. Since that type of Civilization did once exist and thrived before being wiped out by repeated invasions and conquerors. Most definitely there were social and technology issues, but the slow pace of development did not destroy the landscape.
Medicine, Technology, Transportation, Global Trade need tempering with ecological ethical and sustainable standards of implementation, research and development.
Yeah, I’m not idolizing the actual conditions of India, just pointing out an exception to what the person above is talking about.
My ideal society would be a solarpunk version of soviet block housing with tons of bike paths and trams and high speed intercity rail. Cars and meat would be banned, but everyone would have gigabit fiber internet and induction stovetops. Also the thermal and sonic insulation would be fantastic
Soviet blocks are definitely better than urban sprawl when the maintenance and facilities are top-notch.
Taking the single issue of Transportation pollution, when India was in lockdown during covid, we had pollution-free skies, and lo-and-behold the regular rains and normal weather patterns not seen for more than 40 or 50 years returned ! Human transport pollution is the worst in India.
One of the first things Indian/foreign companies did was force workers to mandatorily return to office locations which increases transportation pollution by the bazillions as vehicles are needed to shuttle people, materials and maintenance for everything. And all these corporations talk the big talk of how ESG they are.
If we had below 1b global population, the world would’ve been a much better place.
Have you seen how people in the slums of India live? No one wants that life. It is not unreasonable to want a fair standard of living.
Pay attention. https://lemmy.ca/post/23724190/9974658
So you want us to somehow magically have the greenhouse gas emissions of an Indian, but think we can just have a high standard of living by having Soviet-style housing blocks (famous for being bleak and depressing)? That does not seem grounded in reality.
Edit: and meat is one of the few things I can eat. Not giving that up. Humans have eaten meat since before civilization. It’s a clear sign that overpopulation is a major issue that something that humans have done for eons is suddenly a problem.
For eons, most humans died between the ages of 0 and 1. Before we had modern medicine, we just accepted it and moved on. In many cultures, you wouldn’t bother to name a kid until its first or second birthday, to make the grieving process easier. Now, most babies don’t die. Cows don’t have to die for us either.
We can save more infants, so that means no more meat. That is some non sequitor.
You weren’t paying attention to the point of what I said, were you?
I paid attention. I just don’t agree and in your reasoning poor.
Sure but all those humans need an insane amount of farmland that dwarfs the amount of land they need for housing. And that’s ignoring meat consumption.
With a huge population, beef consumption is insane and is destroying the world.
With a small population, it isn’t a big deal.
That amount of farmland is a lot less if you’re not raising livestock and throwing out perfectly good food because it isn’t profitable. A vegan socialist society has a much higher population ceiling than a carnist capitalist society.
That’s false. We have plenty of real world examples that meat supports much much larger population than plant foods.
Yeah, in a tribal or medieval society. The math is very different in an industrialised society. The point where the equation really starts changing is when there isn’t enough space for all the animals to pasture, so instead of eating grass, the livestock are fed energy dense produce like corn grown on a different farm. Get rid of the cows and feed the corn to the people, and you’ll use a tiny fraction of the amount of land, water, and energy.
Since when Scotland and New Zealand are tribal and medieval societies? Or maybe France and Italy are tribal and medieval? There’s never a point when growing crops is better than growing meat. That’s a myth peddled by the sugar industry.
Australia has roughly the same amount of land as America, and a tenth the population. The Australian meat industry is able to be less subsidized than the American meat industry because of all the extra land. If you want to talk about overpopulation, Australia is one of the last places you should be looking. It has the fourth lowest population density in the world. In America, farmers need to grow corn to feed the cows, and they need extra money from the government to afford to do that. Australia can economically afford to eat meat, but America can’t. And India sure as hell can’t.
Why? Who decided that there aren’t supposed to be this many humans? We just need to accept that humans exist and work with that. Unless your solution is genocide and mass sterelization. And historically, richer nations paradoxically breed less, which is pretty unnatural IMO but seems like the solution to overpopulation: feed and educate.
Science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population
The Earth has carrying capacity limits. I think we’re probably over that, temporarily, mostly because of fossil fuels. We turn fossil fuels into energy and food, degrading that environment and decreasing the Earth’s carrying capacity at the same time. It’s like we’re playing a game of Jinga to push population higher at the expense of our foundation.
What happens when rich nations become poorer? The world’s current predominant economic system cannot function without growth. What will the elites do to maintain the status quo? Perhaps push for banning abortion, contraceptives, and taking away women’s rights and autonomy?
It’s amazing how many people I talk to about overpopulation simply that we get 50% of the land (or more!) and the rest of all other animals get to fight over the rest.
What exactly are you proposing?
I don’t have all the answers, it’s like saying I want candy and not knowing how to make it.
That said, maybe something like a tax on children, free contraceptives, free sterilization, free abortion. Pay people when they reach 45 if they don’t have kids. Robot caregivers for elder care in a decreasing population.
I propose more cool video games.
Better sex-ed in schools. A philosophy change that the best thing you can leave behind on this planet is nothing.
Here, I have a couple examples to kind of, illustrate why, despite the common sentiment, antinatalism, and malthusianism, inherently, like, just straight up, don’t make any sense. This is all based on back of the napkin math that I did a while ago, and I don’t want to redo the numbers, so take it with a grain of salt maybe, but, yeah.
Okay, so, not really taking into account consumption or supply chain, which are major factors, you could fit the entire population of earth in one city the size of about one and a quarter rhode islands, if you had the population density of kowloon. Now, kowloon has retroactively been shat on as having a low quality standard of living, which is partially true, there were leaks everywhere, it was run by the mob, yadda yadda, but there’s nothing inherently problematic with that level of density, there. You could easily expand that to, say, two rhode islands, or three, right, and that would cover an insanely small portion of the earth’s surface while also being more than enough for everyone to live.
On the other hand, if you divided up the earth based on only habitable zones and arable land, you’d get about 2.5 acres per person, which I think also accounts for the elderly and children. To me, that sounds like probably 2.5x more than I would ever need in a lifetime, especially once we kind of tally up all the savings that we can get at scale, at mass production, and then maybe take costs for transportation.
We also, never, never ever take into account the amount of land management which was being done by the various natives of all their lands before colonialism kind of came in and fucked everything up. We have this conception of nature as being some kind of like, inherent good entity that humans can only ever destroy with their presence. A kind of untouched garden of eden that we should basically never touch. As being like, inherently sacred, or having some inherent value, even, to the point where we anthropomorphize it. “Mother nature”. We have this view of humans as also being completely separate from nature, as being an aberration, rather than being a part of it. I think these are both mistakes. We have to view humans as being a part of nature, and we have to start viewing nature as existing everywhere, rather than just being something that you minorly interface with when you go for a hike. Our built environment is part of nature, our decision to plant exclusively male trees that will give off a shit ton of pollen which covers all the windows and makes everything super shitty all spring so we don’t have fruit, that’s a part of nature. So are the raccoons and possums and stray cats and dogs and pigeons and weeds and other things which we see as being invasive but also simultaneously as having no real habitat anymore.
The real solution, I think, is only going to come about when humans collectively start to conceptualize and take accountability for what they go around and do, rather than just sort of, pawning off all responsibility for everything, and cooking up some apocalyptic reality where it’d just be better off if we didn’t exist at all. The genie is out of the bottle. Even to conceptualize of us as being “the problem”, as though there is a singular kind of problem, is a kind of anthropocentrism, and a kind of anthropomorphizing of nature.
I also assume I don’t need to really discuss how like, the idea that we’re currently doing everything in the most efficient way, is a little bit overconfident, and takes everything at a kind of, unchanging face value. As though we exist in the long arc of history with a kind of inevitability, rather than a random happenstance.