zlacker

>>onnnon+(OP)
It's taboo to say this, but people worldwide have had far too many children, and I believe that overpopulation is the root of the sustainability crisis, including climate change and pollution.

And that taboo is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology, people have a genetically driven tendency to criticize those who advocate having less children? So could there be an instinctual drive behind it?

https://www.flashpack.com/solo/relationships/dont-want-kids-...

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/childfree-by-choice

>>127361+ox
There's no such thing as "overpopulation" on its own. There's only population relative to resource abuse. A small fraction of the population using resources at the rate that your common local billionaire or environmentally abusive megacorp uses resources will be just as "over". A much larger population appropriately pricing externalities instead of ignoring them will not be "over".

The number of people in India is not why companies like Vedanta Limited, an alumnium, iron, and gold ore mining company pollute so much.

>>BugsJu+Nx
>There's no such thing as "overpopulation" on its own. There's only population relative to resource abuse.

This is an unfortunate delusion that is widespread, and exploited by governments and industries that seek to ravage what is left of our environment for profit.

If you believe and understand that the earth is a finite place, with finite resources (as all intelligent, rational people do), then you believe and understand that this finite place, with finite resources, can only support a finite population. Of course we can debate about what exactly the "sustainable" population is and we can agree that the "sustainable" population depends on how resources are managed, used and maintained, but there can be no disagreement that this number exists, and that if there are too many people our finite resources cannot sustainably support them no manner how efficiently they are distributed.

Unfortunately far too many people don't believe this, and don't understand that the earth is a finite place with finite resources. They insist that the earth can support an infinite number of people if only we manage our finite resources properly and impose a strict enough dietary and behavioral regiment on the teeming billions stuffed onto the planet.

>>Stanis+eF1
Most essential resources aren't consumed but part of cycles — food, water, shelter. These cycles are sustained by energy and, if we were to use it well, the sun alone provides more than enough.

A simple example of this is that water isn't used up, it gets dirty. It can be made clean again but that requires energy. This can be done by humans (water filtration) or by nature (evaporation and rain). We don't manage these cycles very well and they sometimes stretch out over too many of our lifetimes to manage (plastics, some nuclear waste) so it becomes easier to talk about resource 'use'.

The equation is pretty simple `humans × resources/human`. We can talk about reducing number of humans or reducing the resources needed per human. If we manage the cycles well, humans could inject more resources into the system instead of taking away from it. Of course this would still be limited by available energy. In that case, increasing the number of humans within energy capacity could benefit ecosystems.

We already have a lot of available energy but there is orders of magnitude more available as our technology improves — fusion, thorium fission, solar, wind, tides.