Sorry, but in the midst of presenting human population growth as a massive imbalance, unprecedented and world-ending, you don't have the credibility to say that pointing out the fundamentally imbalanced nature of the earth's systems is somehow irrelevant. It goes to the heart of the matter that the earth is a roiling mass of imbalances interacting and feeding into each other positively and negatively in ways beyond our ken. And has been doing since the very start.
Education and humour can go hand in hand rather well.
I could point you towards:
- Eutrophication;
- Dead zones;
- Entire landscapes irreversibly excavated;
- Top soil layers irreversibly eroded;
- Fish species entirely annihilated;
- Freshwater lakes almost completely drained dry from river diversions and industrial use;
- Increases in seismic activity due to human actions like industrial mining and coal fires;
- Increases in magnitude of hurricanes due to climate change;
- The elimination of natural sulphur leading to a dependency on chemically processed phosphrous... Of which we will certainly run out of in 50 to 100 years due to agriculture having to keep up with rising demand. A product of our effective agriculture, built on an unsustainable chemical during a time where people thought oil was limitless;
- The destruction of the food chain from the bottom up as a direct consequence of invasive species introduced by humans or the loss of pollinators caused by the misuse of pesticides;
- The migration of diseases and parasites to areas of the world where such things were unheard of due to climate change;
- The areas of the world that experience growing flood risks that could leave entire populations homeless or dead;
- The loss of coral reefs due to fishing, farming and climate change that would threaten the existence of all nearby populations that rely on fishing to survive;
- The dust storms caused by topsoil being lost due to farming;
- Or the millions of deaths caused by pollution every year due to respiratory diseases.
This is all just scratching the surface and it's coming from someone who himself does not know the full extent of damage we have caused. Don't forget:
- Overgrazing.
- Air pollution.
- Urban sprawl.
- Deforestation.
- Increasing wealth disparities.
- Habitat fragmentation.
- Habitat destruction.
- Decreasing access to necessities like:
*Water;
*Food;
*Energy.
- Overpopulation;
- Soil erosion;
- Desertification;
- Soil salination;
- Land pollution;
- Heat islands.
All of which we understand and cannot deal with without a reduction in our population - before the time where our population will grow so large only an even more damaging shocking catastrophe can reduce our population.
This is because at their root they are all the result of us, our actions made, and all in an attempt to continue growing when we have not understood we crossed the threshold for sustainable growth.
Now we have caused permanent damage, but we can still have reasonable living standards close to the decadence people enjoy today simply by understanding the impacts we make on the world.
Ignorance is not an excuse.
I see no solutions in your posts.
There were solutions in the OP. Fund education heavily. For everyone.
You propose that we make room in the food supply for more people in order to lower overpopulation.
Where.
In your haste to call a few perfectly good points irrelevant, you were keen to avoid responding to the obviously relevant parts that directly point out your illogic. You say greater farming efficiency is the way to go, giving up beef and other inefficient food sources, while helpfully supplying a chart that shows the population growth which greater farming efficiency since the 15th century has caused. You even managed to do this without a trace of that new-fangled irony that I hear is all the rage these days.
This great farming efficiency was born in a time where creativity was measured in blood and iron. Until truly a century after the age of enlightenment, only now do we realize just how far high we have set ourselves out to fall.
Personally I would not recommend people give up meat to become vegetarians, for health reasons. But I find it shocking to hear of countries where meat is the meal, not bread or grains and 66% of their country is obese.
Farming will get more efficient, to be sure. Yet we still need to have radical changes in how we farm, no change in efficiency with the way we produce and distribute food will improve our predicament.
If we strive to achieve the greatest farming efficiencies possible, human population will eventual reach the level that this straining of food output can permit. If the increase toward the maximum does not happen in your country, then it will in some other country that buys your unwanted surplus. We hit maximum and stay there. Well and good. But then something changes, as must in all systems, and this optimised efficiency takes a sudden hit. How do you support a population level intended for greatest efficiencies when the conditions no longer allow that output? You don't. Your 15 billion is living on the new maximum output capable of feeding 10 billion. Famine occurs.
If we willingly allow inefficiencies to remain, that gives us wiggle room is a real emergency. If we all eat steak, food costs will be higher even for grains, people will voluntarily have fewer children due to economic constraints. If a drought happens, this inefficiency can be upgraded temporarily and everyone eats grain until the drought passes. By suggesting that our systems must always achieve the optimally efficient outputs, you damn us to the certainty of future famines whenever that efficiency experiences a momentary tweak by outside conditions.
People living in poverty have the largest families. Your proposal causes more economic damage, does nothing to mitigate the problem of overpopulation and turns a blind eye to those suffering.
This is why I say that you really don't understand the systems involved. It's better to leave some inefficiencies in the workings.
I would like you to read that quote carefully.