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Comment by zyngaro | Hacker News Reader

At some point (now) we have to consider birth control as an answer to global warming.

Edit: my point is that we cannot feed the same food (rice, meat) an ever growing population and reduce greenhouse emissions at the same time.

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Yeah, of course, less humans = less problems for the planet. But that's an extremely unpopular idea, so you won't find any politicians to support it. Plus, the current growth-based economy (which BTW is also a major obstacle for long-term sustainability) is much harder to keep up with a shrinking population.

Less humans, not so much.

Less rich humans, maybe? At this point, just getting rid of people probably still leaves the earth in a tailspin of overheating

Richest 1% (> $100,000 income) emit 50% of the emissions according to Oxfam: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

The countries with the highest emissions have already embraced that. Birth rates are well below replacement rates in the developed world.

OTOH one American's share of US CO2 emissions is 7 times that of one Indian's share of India's CO2 emissions.

Even before you take into account billing emissions to the consumer, where they rightfully belong!

Unless you want to reduce the population to ca. 0 by 2035, I don't see how population control can get us carbon neutral.

We could just wipe out the populations in the developed world since thats where most of its coming from.

If we had 0 babies for next 10 years population would reduce only 700 million which is again 7 bn or level Earth had in 2011. But further down the line that 10 year gap would create devastating knowledge transfer impact and also economic impact 20 - 50 years later.

Absolutely!

I don't have anything to add but this is the be all, end all.

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