Comment by MaxGanzII | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaxGanzII | Hacker News Reader

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CO₂ is not the only factor driving ecological damage and indeed, the mass extinction event currently in progress.

There are simply too many humans for the way in which we as a species currently behave.

Either we need single parent families, globally, for a few generations, to get numbers down to a sustainable level, or, we have to convince/force 7 billion people to accept and adhere to major changes in how they live their lives.

CO₂ is a basically easy problem, compared to this, if it is possible to take the route of geo-engineering, because, as you say, it's not necessary to change how people behave; but I think no matter what, there is a need to change how people behave, or billions die from famine and economic failure, induced by ecological collapse.

I don't think people will change (indeed, there will be large numbers of people vocally against change), I think Governments will at best effectively do nothing "(we're building lots of renewable! but we're also building lots of gas at the same time!"), or more likely make things worse ("we'll phase out coal by 2070"), so my expectation is human suffering on a scale never seen before in all human history.

Humans are kākāpō; we're over-reproducing, having as they did no meaningful natural predators to keep us in check, and sooner or later, that leads to ecological collapse.

(The kākāpō went through several cycles of this and evolved to reproduce very, very slowly, and so came into balance with their environment, and then were very nearly almost completely wiped out when humans arrived.)

Dude, its not the 50s, most of the world is under replacement rate of reproduction. The problem now is largely the opposite, shortage of young minds to invent carbon free energy grids and young hands to build them. You can cut human population by half and still have a problem of excessive carbon emissions or transition to carbon free economy and have net zero per capita emission.

Also I don't want humanity to be almost completely wiped out.

if young minds are really the limiting factor - maybe we could be doing a better job with education.

I may be wrong, but I think the world population is growing more quickly than you portray, and will be for some decades yet, and we currently have far too many people for how we conduct ourselves as a species.

I may also be wrong to think it, but I would expect if you halved the world population, assuming it was done equally across the world, you would indeed halve human carbon emissions; half as many people, half as many homes, cars, power stations, etc.

Based on current trajectories, the world's population is not going to double again (or even increase by 50%), it will level off at about 10 billion and at that point perhaps start to shrink. It's possible this level is not sustainable with an acceptable standard of living, but it's not obvious and it certainly isn't inevitable that humanity will reproduce out of control.

I would say though that this is what I'm arguing.

The planet can't cope now - the environment is falling apart right now, already - and the mid-range estimate there's another two or three billion people to come over the next few decades.

There are estimates in excess of this, there are estimates lower. Estimates which have population declines see slow declines only.

I've not seen any real understanding of why the fertility rate is dropping, particularly in first world countries. That's a concern; what happens if the factors causing this to happen are transient?

That's part of why the estimates are only estimates, of course.

Hans Rosling explains it very well: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies

Can you provide a source for the mid-range estimate you mention? Global population is on the brink of decline rather than further growth. [1]

> I've not seen any real understanding of why the fertility rate is dropping, particularly in first world countries. That's a concern; what happens if the factors causing this to happen are transient?

The cited article discusses several potential causes and none are going away in the near future. On a global basis, humanity's current demographic profile locks in decades of either very low growth or a decline in most regions. Worth noting that these changes have all come about at a much faster pace than even the most aggressive estimates.

Despite this as our overall numbers will start shrinking, resource consumption will grow and its growth can't be prevented by force without conflict. The only class of realistic solutions to environmental degradation are technological ones. Tapping into new stockpiles (likely out in space) and increasing efficiency slash decreasing resource intensity of economic activity are more viable if one aims to avoid armed confrontation.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/global-population-s...

You are so right but nobody wants to hear it. We are incredibly short-sighted and incapable of accepting inconvenient truths. Every child conceived (and their children) is an enormous burden to the earth and all of us (in the grand scale of things) but because more population is in the best interest of every individual family, city, region and country, no reduction will ever happen, at least not voluntarily.

I think you mean: every _first world_ child.

Third world children consume less, but their parents engage in deforestation and bushmeat hunts to sustain their families. This is an environmental burden as well.

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