Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vector]

I don't ever intend to have kids, so I'm participating already!

And I'm a pretty strict vegetarian.

[Loud Whispers]

If anything more access to food seems to kill our population off.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Agricultural revolution kicks off at the 15th century. Given time that graph may soon resemble DF's difficulty curve and all will be horrible and depressing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are serious, serious, serious issues with most kinds of population control. The biggest problem is that the entire right and most of the left are already in opposition, albeit for different reasons. The right just plain supports natalist policy, while even the members of the left whom are antinatalist aren't going to shun accusations of functional genocide (or worse, the fear that the right might use such policies for genocide).

Even soft policies have this issue. Ignore the one child policy. Let's just say that young childless people are offered a lump sum to undergo permanent sterilization. You'll be halfway through trying to sell it before everyone accuses you of trying to kill off poor ethnicities. I know because India tried this and that's exactly what happened. The only soft policy I can think of that would work would be offering childless people some money every year they don't have any children, until age 50 or so.

Ultimately the only thing that will not result in a collapse of public opinion is more people realizing the urgency of the situation or trying to change society in such a way that people don't have children on their own.

Roy Jenkins was a British PM who decriminalized homosexuality, scrapped the birching of prisoners and promoted free speech against censorship; all against public opinion. Especially how most superpowers are veering towards becoming well run police states, in some strange twist of affairs public opinion needn't be an issue. For now let's assume that for the sake of seeing how justifiable such government control would be, let us say they would be able to.

Overpopulation isn't the problem.  Distribution of resources is.

Overpopulation exacerbates the latter whilst bringing its own series of issues. It is in itself one of the greatest problems humanity will have to tackle.

[G-Flex]

Without immigration, it's likely that population in many developed countries would actually be falling. If we want to solve overpopulation problems, we need to solve economic problems. Overpopulation is a very beatable thing, naturally, without having to even engage in means specifically designed to counteract it.

[Neonivek]

I honestly don't have to do a thing

As "my" countries quality of life increases our population Growth goes down.

In fact we are trying to find ways to get MORE people.

It is kind of the problem with this idea of "GET LESS CHILDREN!" for some places the system for decreasing population growth is already in place (at least where I live) and in fact works TOO well.

So why would my government need to step in to encourage it? we have a birthrate of 1.02% we have a lower birthrate then China that actually has laws to prevent it... and we have laws to encourage births.

[Truean]

We could try several reasonable alternatives, but war or something like it seems more likely and fun.

We could reform our society. What we would want is what all people want: civilization.

O perhaps it wouldn't be as it is now, but civilization, yes. Some kind of music, an end to Jersey Shore and Brittany Spears, etc. Now we'd have to learn how to get along with one another passably and find entertainment in something not quite so overtly violent. Whatever that is, we'd have to figure out how to get tickets.

Then of course there's the street crime, but I believe we can watch that for free.

So, war it is then?

[Neonivek]

No, War can easily backfire and super boost the population growth.

In fact that is what happened in the USA... Sure the war did decrease their population, but the resulting baby boom (and subsequent baby boom echo) more then replenished it even beyond the births if the war never happened.

[Truean]

O I never thought war was a solution, but I fear that is what we're heading towards.

[Eagleon]

Forget about population. Instead, kill like 12 birds with one stone, and equalize the third world with the first.

If you want to talk about the environment, the mining capacity in the developed world mostly consists of very scarce things like oil, natural gas, etc, and a few things like timber that would be too expensive to ship for a large portion of its applications. Whereas, if you look around you, 90% or more of what you see will have been pulled out of the ground at some point.

They still require the same amount of time and effort to mine, process, finish, package, ship, and sell that they did 30 years ago. In many cases, the same amount it did 100 years ago. You are living on the backs of hundreds, if not thousands of laborers you'll never meet. Most of them have much better things to worry about than climate change, like how they'll feed their families, or where to get clean water. They'll use anything they can to make their lives easier, they would strip a forest high and dry of panda bears, tigers, cancer cures, firewood, and whatever else they can sell to the poachers that can sell to people moderately more privileged than themselves. And you cannot possibly blame them, because you'd do the same in their situation.

Poverty and inequality is a disaster for the environment. We have it at the scale we do because the west demands cheap manufactured goods.  Ironically, probably the most environmentally friendly material you can choose right now for anything is plastic, because some of it will have been extracted and produced by chemical plants in the first world. Saying that given the chance, the 3rd world would ask for the same is kind of missing that we're only able to demand so much because human lives are so cheap. Particularly offensive is complaining about China wanting meat when a lot of their workers live on little more than a bit of rice every day. The suburban explosion, our own pet ecological nightmare, happened because of the shift to a service economy and a sudden boom in availability of the manufactured goods and core building materials needed to supply so many new families with housing.

TLDR version, if you want the population to stabilize, the first step is to boost the rights, education, and living conditions for the people making your monitors. New technology and cheaper parts are only going to exacerbate the problem until you do. You can have cheap monitors, or you can have a population capable of considering their effects on climate without killing themselves. </rant>

[Xantalos]

PTW, and while I may have a spawn in my lifetime, it's unlikely.

[darkflagrance]

Is overpopulation really the problem, or is it sustaining large amounts of people at a first-world standard of living? If there was a political authority capable of ordering the cessation of inefficient uses of water for things like lawns or showers, or of using crops to feed livestock, we could probably easily support larger populations at our current levels of resource consumption.

Even if we reduce population growth, if we try to uplift the world's population to the standard of living of first world countries, won't we run into the same resource problems anyway? Likewise, if the world is destined to support a small elite at first world standards of living and maintain a huge marginal population that subsists on leftovers at a much lower standard, perhaps the real problem is that we who live the good life fear falling into the margins.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Lawns and showers are a pittance if you want to save water. The total residential usage of water is only about 10% of all water, and trying to limit lawns and showers just pisses people off.

Major water savings would be in agriculture, followed by industry.

A first-world standard of living is doable without using as much as we do now. For example, it would be fair to say that Americans and Canadians have a similar standard of living to most Europeans. Yet, Europe only uses about half of the resources the US and Canada do, and could even do much better than that.

We need to focus on using less, but the kind of lessening is equally important. "Lower your own standard of living" lessening is fucking stupid and will never, ever be accepted by a meaningful number of people (this, or at least the reputation of it, crippled the early environmental movement). What is smart, and what will work, is to more evenly distribute resources while maximizing the efficiency of those resources used. If you do that, you can bring first-world conditions (or whatever you'd call them in 50 years) to all humanity and not destroy Earth.

[misko27]

I say immediate and large-scale use of nuclear weapons on all major Population centers is the only way to resolve this crisis in a fair and equitable manner, and with a acceptable drop in animal and plant species, with room for regrowth. Sure, it'll be bad, but there really isn't a alternative. Look, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for our lives and the life of our species. Now truth is not always a pleasant thing, but it is necessary now to choose between 2 admitably regrettable, but nevertheless, distinguishable, post-crisis environments, one where you got 1 billion people killed, and one where you got 7 billion people killed!

[Frumple]

Yeah... Misk? Urban population (i.e. "major population centers") is over 50% of humanity's population now. It stepped over the majority line back in 2010. It wouldn't be 1 in 7. It'd be one out of every two... on the low end.

To say nothing as to what that would actually do to the world, politically and otherwise. That wouldn't be a case of "bad", it would likely be a case of "worse than just letting things go to hell". Wide scale murder isn't really a possible solution to this problem, and never has been. The chances of meaningful regrowth happening after the systemic shock induced by the degree of death that would be necessary to meaningfully impact things is worse than it would be in a lot of the predicted scenarios caused by environmental devastation. Minor die-back wouldn't be enough. Cutting our population back by a billion would do basically jack shit (buy a few more decades, maybe, depending on the societal damage involved) once the fallout from that settled. We bred an extra billion in under twenty years. Even halving it quite possibly wouldn't buy much time in the grand scheme of things. World's pop was around that less than a century ago. You want to kill off six out of seven? Congrats. You're back at the 1800s at the earliest.

Point? That "solution" is utter bullshit. Yes, by and large we need to lower population and slow growth, no, sudden depopulation isn't a viable solution. That's what we're trying to avoid, above and beyond the fact that it likely wouldn't frakking work. Sudden die-back might buy time. A little. Maybe. It wouldn't, however, solve the problem, nor would it even help solve the problem.

Honestly, shortsighted bullshit solutions like that is probably better than half the damned reason we're rushing towards the whole bloody environmental kerfluffle.

[misko27]

Yeah... Misk? Urban population (i.e. "major population centers") is over 50% of humanity's population now. It stepped over the majority line back in 2010. It wouldn't be 1 in 7. It'd be one out of every two... on the low end.

To say nothing as to what that would actually do to the world, politically and otherwise. That wouldn't be a case of "bad", it would likely be a case of "worse than just letting things go to hell". Wide scale murder isn't really a possible solution to this problem, and never has been. The chances of meaningful regrowth happening after the systemic shock induced by the degree of death that would be necessary to meaningfully impact things is worse than it would be in a lot of the predicted scenarios caused by environmental devastation. Minor die-back wouldn't be enough. Cutting our population back by a billion would do basically jack shit (buy a few more decades, maybe, depending on the societal damage involved) once the fallout from that settled. We bred an extra billion in under twenty years. Even halving it quite possibly wouldn't buy much time in the grand scheme of things. World's pop was around that less than a century ago. You want to kill off six out of seven? Congrats. You're back at the 1800s at the earliest.

Point? That "solution" is utter bullshit. Yes, by and large we need to lower population and slow growth, no, sudden depopulation isn't a viable solution. That's what we're trying to avoid, above and beyond the fact that it likely wouldn't frakking work. Sudden die-back might buy time. A little. Maybe. It wouldn't, however, solve the problem, nor would it even help solve the problem.

Honestly, shortsighted bullshit solutions like that is probably better than half the damned reason we're rushing towards the whole bloody environmental kerfluffle.

It is clear you didn't follow the link. I was parodying the position.

I mean hell, I live in one of those cities! What kind of idiot do you take me for?

[Frumple]

Presumably one that would actually bite the bullet first if you were proposing something like that. Gods know that during the short period I was somewhat inclined towards that sort of thinking (most seem to go through that sort of phase when they're first running into the problem, but not yet actually picked up enough to know what the hell's going on.) I always included myself among those culled. Apologizes for the overestimation, I guess.

E: It doesn't help that that's basically the exact same line of reasoning that the whole "war will fix the problem" reaction follows. Hat tip for the flanderization, I guess. That comes before the strangulation for not using the sarcasm font.