I don't understand people for population control. There is plenty of resources for everybody, but corrupt people in power are usually the reason why it isn't given to those people.
I think you're underestimating just how many people 7 million is. It's true that there's inequality which leads to wealthy regions like Europe and the Americas using vastly disproportionate resources, but that doesn't change the fact that we've got a massive amount of people. The only reason we're even able to maintain current populations levels this long is because of techniques of the green revolution that are proving to be less sustainable than originally advertised. That's not to say nothing good came out there, but monocultures screw up the soil and there's only so much you can ramp up fertilization before it becomes less feasible, meanwhile the resultant eutrophication is destroying waterways that are already subject to massive overfishing, meanwhile coastline development is destroying forage fish spawning grounds, meaning that even if all oceanic fishing stopped right now, populations still couldn't return to their original levels. I mean, this is just food, to say nothing of the decadence of petroleum products, the loss of biodiversity, and the slow but inexhorable march of global warming. There are enough resources right at this specific instant in time, true, but we can't freeze time right now. Time is proceeding forward, and will continue to do so regardless of the actions of "people in power".
Murder et al is just kinda' stupid, though. Be better off with sterilization and/or just plain ol' social incentives, and making sure things are set up to prevent encouraging large families (i.e. make sure the kids cost a crap ton). And yeah, I'd have zero problem with that hitting m'self, but I'm also a pretty poor example that has absolutely zero intention of having kids to begin with.
Yeah, my intended point was that an increase in the death rate is not itself an argument against something, because it's not inherently bad. It's not an efficient solution though.
The only form of population control killings I am for is industrial level slaughter of people for good. Meat is murder! Well yes, that is the point. Now have another serving - I hear the fried baby chops in this place is fantastic. Next time I'm gonna show you this Japanese place I know of - they serve actual Kobe muscle there.
This is also not efficient, for trophic reasons. Reducing the consumption of meat should be a major goal in the first place, there's no reason for any human to eat as much meat as is normal in the first world. The amount of land that must be dedicated to the cultivation of herbivores is simply astronomical compared to that dedicated to plants, on a per-calorie basis. And yet, besides both health and economic detriment, many people eat meat every single day as though it were a matter of course! Compounding this problem by eating* organisms of even higher trophic levels is utter foolishness.
Just one problem there.
The people with 10 kids in the 3rd world country consume fewer resources/have smaller ecological footprint, than the single trendy hipster in the 1st world country.
To really cut the fat, and make a more sustainable earth, you need to take that vente late away from the latter, not give condoms to the former.
But that would mean changing my lifestyle!
I just want to solve problems by blaming others.
There's actually a ton of things that can be done without massive lifestyle changes. Did you know that almost all Americans use electric dryers for their clothes even in the summer? The cost of using a line is essentially nil, it's mostly restricted for aesthetic reasons. Even the added time of hanging the clothes is rebated by time saved ironing.
Of course, a lot of problems are institutional. American transportation costs are high because only poor Americans use public transport, which is the case because high density housing is seen as undesirable, and that's the case because American cities are zoned with wide roads and low buildings, with housing and shops kept disparate, so there's no advantage to being able to go down and walk the street. So Americans need to get in the car just to buy bread. So Americans drive around big American cities all the time, which are heated by the traffic, by the physical properties of building materials, and by the location (because why wouldn't you build in a desert?) so more resources are used on simply incredible amounts of air conditioning. And that holds true even in suburbia, where land and water are wasted on green lawns modeled after those first implemented in Versailles as a show of pure conspicuous consumption.
And if you fixed all those problems, you'd wind up with a European city, which is perhaps the best model we have no for providing a lot of luxury for a lot of people efficiently, but it's still not an adequate model for the number of people that we will have before populations asymptote.
urbanisation and consumerism have been a thing in third world countries for a while now too.
Urbanization is not, itself, a problem. Providing services to humans gets a lot more efficient when the humans are all close together. Cities themselves have a negative impact on their immediate environment (though there are things that can be done to mitigate it) but rising populations mean that dispersed populations are becoming less viable. That's actually a major reason for urbanization, as people find that they no longer have the land to support their lifestyle or (often, in developing countries) any life at all.
*as a matter of typical and cultivated sustenance. Using incidental mortalities as food is a different matter.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4457602 times)