Like I said. :P
I said as much several times.
[quote=âMrGrumpy, post:4210, topic:128260â]
Thatâs not required. Reducing fossil fuel consumption (and changing eating habits, i.e. consuming less meat and dairy) will go a long way toward mitigating temperature rise. In the short to medium term, energy costs will rise, but all that really does is price in externalities (which currently are not.) Most economist agree a carbon tax is probably the best solution to achieve that goal. There are even a few Republicans who agree with that, but sadly they are few and far between.[/quote]
You may be right. But I am skeptical, I hope I am allowed that.
I still say the only way out of this is to reduce the population and get people to stop living a modern life. As long as people want roads, cars, computers, TV programs, airliners, sewer pumps, more than 3 changes of clothing, buses, soccer matches â all the things of modern life that need energy and materials to create, we will have these problems. Weâve built this massive train of civilization and progress, itâs going to take a lot more than hope and little tweaks to our lifestyle to slow it down.
Thanks for the link. Iâll check it out, mate.
Reduce the population sounds bad. I guess itâs not really a solution for those who are reduced.
Itâs not at all clear to me that modern life has to end. Cars are a problem, but building urban density pretty much solves that by eliminating the need for cars. Airliners are a problem, but almost all of them, at least domestic ones, could be replaced by trains. Meat production is a problem, but people could stop eating meat. Renewable power generation is more or less a solved problem, at least in theory if not in actual practice yet, which means the things that eat electricity need not be a problem.
This is a huge problem, which may soon be ameliorated with fabricated meat. I canât wait.
Youâd have to do it through restricting the number of children couples can have. If you restricted it to two youâd see a gradual reduction. Not everyone gets married and not all couples have kids or have two kids.
Yes, thatâs how I mean it.
See: Chinaâs one-child policy.
Population control is so weird. You can make a good case that there are too many people on the planet IMO, but individual countries (especially developed/wealthy ones) often face demographic crises of having too few kids. And then thereâs the matter of individual rightsâŚ
Yeah, and the idea of limiting births needs to be applied world-wide, without exception, to make it work. So it will never happen.
The thing is a lot of countries do need to keep the babies coming, but on a world-wide scale every person born who will buy a car, live with AC, have a fridge and a freezer, is contributing to global warming.
And we really donât need more people living in the deserts in Nevada and Arizona, do we?
Well, there is the toaster colleration. People with toasters have fewer kids.
So far the colleration has held true in other parts of the world. Raising the standards of living reduces populations. Sadly, that also increases the pollution that individuals produces.
Again, lots of things can be improved with a shift toward urban living and density, changes in diet and a shift toward more-efficient travel. Itâs the McMansion ideal of suburban living that is responsible for the automobile lifestyle and the resulting greenhouse emissions as well as the resource waste of automobile consumerism. Itâs the focus on meat protein. Itâs ubiquitous air travel even when air travel is totally unnecessary for many trips. Change all those things and Iâm not sure population levels are a problem at all.
Forcing limits on births wonât work, people have a visceral reaction against such things and wonât do it short of being forced by an authoritarian regime. But if you improve quality of life and education and health care, the birth rate drops as a natural consequence. I found this interesting post from nearly 10 years ago talking about the reasons:
And you get a huge economic benefit, for a period, while the economically productive cohort is larger than the cohort of dependents.
Thatâs way too complex.
The issue is entirely (imo) that the demands of education and work âcrowd outâ childbearing for women. To me this is almost an unsolvable problem - the prime child bearing years (20-30) are going to be the busiest and most demanding in terms of school and work. Of course this implies a society progressive enough to let women make their own choices.
Itâs also a problem in that anything over the replacement rate (>2 kids per woman) is almost certainly going to necessitate her leaving employment. You might meet a female CEO or Professor with 1 child, but almost certainly not 5 kids.
And this is because the entire childhood->education->work âlifepathâ has been set up to fit around menâs lifepaths, not womenâs. Increasing the birth rate while also helping women gain both education and employment is going to âtake a villageâ, or at least, a different way of organizing these things.
The crazy thing about birthrates is how quickly the population can decline. 10 generations of women having on average 1 child each drops the population of the earth to 8 million.
The real problem, and iâve said this before, is growth centered capitalism. Economists donât know what to do if growth is stagnant or declining in a country - yet reducing the population will require exactly that.
What?
Sorry, typing on the phone. Correlation.
Toaster correlation.
Man, I wish keyboards would come back on phones, but no society wants thin in built batteries and no keyboards because of horrible reasons.
Ah, so you accidentally swapped all the Rs and Ls in the same word twice in the same post. You definitely did not forget how the word was spelled. Gotcha.
Forget the spelling of the word. Whatâs up with this?
Do kids not eat toast anymore? What is this world coming to?
Youâre going on two posts now to try to drive home the point that someone may have misspelled a word?
Yeah, maybe youâre going for tongue-in-cheek but itâs coming off being-an-asshole.
Forget it, Kev; itâs Zylontown.