We cant fit people sustainably as it is right now, living as americans or not. We are even more fecked when we reach 9 billion and beyond.
Greta Thunberg
- Thread starter Samid
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Yes we can, but not with the current average lifestyle.
So when it comes to it: do we tell people to not have kids or tell them to change their lifestyle?
People complaining about overpopulation usually just want less people living in Asia and Africa, so they can just continue their destructive lifestyle. It’s a very bad excuse to justify a lack of willingness to accept blame and to improve once one behaviour.
There is no such thing as overpopulation. We just don’t distribute our wealth nearly fair enough.
Boomers and older.
Well you can try your best in Denmark. Good luck beyond this tiny blot of a country.
Absolute bullshit. More people, more consumption. Its not hard science. And most people very understandbly want more wealth.
Exactly. I don't see her achieving anything substantial beyond making a bunch of rich old men annoyed and young people angry that their message is being ignored again.
The world population will probably level off in about 100-200 years (if the various projections I've read on the internet turn out to be true).
It's a general rule that the wealthier and healthier you get, the fewer children you have. So at the moment, rich countries like Japan and Italy have shrinking populations. But poor countries with poor healthcare have growing populations (often as an insurance policy to provide future care to their parents).
But there'll come a point when every nation on the planet is able to provide a reasonable standard of healthcare to its citizens. And in the meantime, the West will continue see a fall in its population.
The equilibrium point is projected to be around 10 billion. So even at humanity's peak population, the planet should be able to provide more than enough for everyone. We just have to move on to sustainable energy sources to avoid ruining what's already here before then.
Incidentally, people who talk us being in 'late stage Capitalism' are wrong, imo. Capitalism is going to continue to go from strength to strength until economic growth is no longer possible. That will only happen after the population equilibrium is actually reached, and it becomes impossible to leverage debt against ever-increasing future generations.
So the economy and the environment are most likely to be finally fixed at around the same time, and it'll be one of those things we have to wait to see until after current system grinds to a halt. Until then, it's going to be a case of treading water and hoping we don't drown.
It's a general rule that the wealthier and healthier you get, the fewer children you have. So at the moment, rich countries like Japan and Italy have shrinking populations. But poor countries with poor healthcare have growing populations (often as an insurance policy to provide future care to their parents).
But there'll come a point when every nation on the planet is able to provide a reasonable standard of healthcare to its citizens. And in the meantime, the West will continue see a fall in its population.
The equilibrium point is projected to be around 10 billion. So even at humanity's peak population, the planet should be able to provide more than enough for everyone. We just have to move on to sustainable energy sources to avoid ruining what's already here before then.
Incidentally, people who talk us being in 'late stage Capitalism' are wrong, imo. Capitalism is going to continue to go from strength to strength until economic growth is no longer possible. That will only happen after the population equilibrium is actually reached, and it becomes impossible to leverage debt against ever-increasing future generations.
So the economy and the environment are most likely to be finally fixed at around the same time, and it'll be one of those things we have to wait to see until after current system grinds to a halt. Until then, it's going to be a case of treading water and hoping we don't drown.
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We have enough wealth for everyone. We have enough food and we have enough resources. There is no overpopulation. Just a severe lack of fair distribution. Overpopulation is a lazy myth to justify inhumane stances.
That's to be honest not the case in point. And the communist/socialist revolution of a world goverment restrubution wealth isnt happening.
It is. Overpopulation would mean, that the resources of the world aren't enough to potentially supply every part of that population. We are not at that point. We are not even close to that point. The issue is not overpopulation, as it doesn't exist. It's capitalism and it's unjust distribution of wealth and resources. We have more than enough resources to easily enable every single human being to live a dignified life.
Also recent studies suggest that the worlds population is closing in on its peak and should soon after start to decline.
You do know that in the context of CO2 emissions every citizen of the world having the GDP of the average US citizen is not right? We are discussing envirotmentalism.
And you are confusing living a dignified life with living like an American why?
I don't think they feel guilty. I think they can't handle their comfortable existence and viewpoints being challenged and potentially changed by people they don't deem to be like themselves (gender, race, age etc.)
I think she's done more than a small part. She's getting people paying attention to it and talking about it, which is the only way change will happen.
Sure there's lots of reasons to be hopeless about the idea of making the changes necessary on this scale. You can make very strong logical and emotional arguments for it. At the end of the day it's not very constructive so the people that are intolerant of that attitude will necessarily create a bit of friction.
How could they possibly be uneducated on the subject when they've been exposed to more information, have better tools to process that information, and have been able to see the story develop from a fringe subject in their youth to one of the most important subjects of our time?
Being exposed to knowledge and being able to grasp it and update the previously held knowledge even if the two are contradictory are completely different things.
The biggest reason always comes down to people not being able to change their routines at which point they start coming up with mental gymnastics to justify their laziness and unwillingness on improving the situation. (Like the bloke above in this thread) The unwillingness only grows as you grow older given the time left in your life decreases and you are gonna be the least affected by the consequences.
I wouldn't say that sweeping judgment applies to the majority of older generations (and you can see two very different responses from two similarly aged folks from similar backgrounds in the climate thread, in @Buster15 and @Maticmaker), but I do think being stuck in ones ways explains more of the "turn off" than a lack of education, for sure.
Christ, it sounds like you're seething at the mere suggestion that maybe we shouldn't live a life of excessive consumerism.
'
I'm not seething at all.
Being compared to @Maticmaker is a huge compliment.
But when people look back at the early days of the climate change movement, Greta will be acknowledged as someone who has been instrumental in mobilising millions upon millions of people. And brought this most important of subjects very much into the public consciousness.
She has and will continue to do more than any single individual.
How many of us can claim to have done anything even remotely as important.
Certainly not me that is for sure.
Well we can also substitute that we the life of the average dane/scandinavian. Or you can give a blueprint of a dignified life. Lets say that India hits co2 emissions pr. capita around 7 or 8 like Denmark and Norway. That would increase their current Co2 emissions about 4 times and they are already the worlds 3rd largest co2 emitters because of their massive population..
38 isn’t middle aged?!
So I'm not middle aged? Hooray! I always liked you Pexbo.
Same reason why people still think evolution is fake despite being taught about it in science.
Never doubt how ignorant can be despite being educated.
How about just reducing the damn carbon emissions from USA? It's a bit rich for them to criticize other countries when they're the ones contributing one of the most in the world.
I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how protests and movements works. Very often the goal is not to convince people, it's to mobilise the people who in varying grades are already on your side.
I'll do the go-to comparison I always make, the American Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King jr, and the movement generally, didn't convince people that black people should be given more rights. In fact, as the movement went on it became more and more unpopular, and the same rethoric as people are directing at BLM now was widrespread (violent, riots, communist, etc). What the movement did was to get people together, mobilising people who were for the goals, and use that to create pressure and political capital.
A 40-something guy who doesn't care about climate change doesn't matter. He wasn't going to do anything anyway, so how he reacts to Greta is irrelevant. Likewise, those who deny climate change are also irrelevant. She's telling people to listen to the scientists, the scientists have spoken for decades and the denialists have kept on denying. How they react to her is irrelevant.
What a movement like this is doing is taking people who already know that climate change is real and a threat, primarily young people, and make sure that the topic is out there and that people actually care about it and think about it actively. If you work with kids, or young people, then it's pretty amazing how much they talk about climate change. How high up their list it is when talking (future) voting and politics. Of course that's not all down to Greta, that'd be absurd, but she is having an impact on a lot of people's lives and attititudes.
One of the groups MLK wrote and spoke most scathingly about was the White Moderate. Not the KKK guys, but the moderate white people who, sure, in their hearts of hearts believed that black people should be given more rights, but didn't actually do anything. Not right now, not yet, not this way. Eventually. These were people who in principle were on the side of black people, but in practice they were not. The goal of a lot of movements is to both energize the people already in your camp and to force the moderates to act on their beliefs. A lot of White Moderates would vote for equal rights, but they won't do shit to make a vote happen. So you force the issue and make them vote. Some conservatives turned even more racist in the process? feck them, this wasn't about changing hearts.
The road from what young people care about to what politicians care about is long, of course, which is a big drawback when we don't have that much time to act.
Sure, I think the majority of people who are into enviromentalism would want that. It still doesn't change the fact that growth, consumerism and overpopulation on a global level is what depletes our earth rescources and drives up CO2 emissisons and countries with vast populations and emerging economies will obviously have lifting people out of poverty above all else.
The richest 1% cause double the amount of CO2 that the poorest 50% produce. Think about that.
Great post.
what's that's got to do with what I said? I want the poorer to get richer and getting richer will mean more consumption, but that will also understandbly be a strain on our enviroment, so yeah, so I prefer poor people getting richer rather than reaching net zero.
Yeah that's a very good point but it'll fly over some posters heads because grr greta and the young. Hooray centrism.
The reason the earth has depleting resources is due to hyper capitalism and consumption by the richest (and mega corporations). If this is reined in, with distribution of wealth and resources, this walk to disaster we’re facing can be stopped.
I think the point is the focus in that equation should be a transfer of emissions from the 1% rather than a net add.
We need a new tax that punishes emissions caused by excess. Private jets was one recently in the news and they fecking excluded them from the jet fuel tax, a complete farce.
Are you expecting some kind of world wide socialist/communist revolution or something?
No - I’m expecting stronger govt legislation, accountability and taxes. It’s a joke that poor people in the east should suffer due to greed in the west.
But if you're saying that the result of all the teaching up to this point has led them to their current position, then how can the solution be...more teaching?
The reason people think evolution is fake is not a lack of knowledge, it's an unwillingness to engage with facts over beliefs. There's no amount of facts you can throw at them that can change their beliefs, and their beliefs are more important than facts - in their view, there's simply things that cannot be known, you just have to believe in the higher power, non-believers just don't get it - so spending more time on educating those people would lead to very little change while
They don't "know" how important climate change is because they don't want to know, because they understand all the implications that come with that knowledge. The messenger doesn't change that fact. They've already got a completely different kind of messenger from their generation, good ol' Dave, who takes a completely different approach to activism. If they haven't heard the message, they're not listening, it doesn't matter who's saying it. But then there's very little evidence that anyone hasn't heard the message yet.
It's just an excuse to criticise someone you don't like.
Who said anything about making the poor people in the the east suffer?