Achieve Sustainability by Easing Population to 4 Billion by 2200

7 days ago by eleitl to c/collapse

4 billions by 2200? And agency in the matter? A nice brand of hopium they're consuming.

ABSTRACT

The past century of massive increases in human population and resource use has seen many undesirable environmental effects, ranging from biodiversity loss to climate change. But a research gap exists, as the ultimate causes are often not described with precision or mentioned at all. In this study, metrics of biodiversity, consumption, and pollution show extremely strong correlations when charted against human population size and its per capita impacts. We describe causal mechanisms for these correlations. Then, using available data, we show that slowing and gradually reversing population growth to ∼4 billion or less by 2200, while moderating per capita impacts, is the path toward sustainability. Among the benefits are habitat recovery and conservation of wild species, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, reduced conflict over resources, and the reduction of global poverty.

tyranny 6 points 6 days ago

4 billion people polluting what king charles does in a year will not decrease ecological collapse. the population number doesn't matter if tyranny and exploitation continue. this is just an excuse to delete undesirable populations

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eleitl 1 point 6 days ago

You might be aware that we're rapidly running out of several resources, including fossil fuels. Given https://ourworldindata.org/... people need no excuse to be dying of famine. As renewable infrastructure is constructed with massive use of fossil fuels and mining I'm sure that you can see where this is going. Subsistence agriculture means 95% in farming, a population of (perhaps a lot less) than a billion. Also, there will be plenty of tyranny and exploitation, since we will regress to feudal state.

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tyranny 1 point 6 days ago

i don't understand what you're saying. would you mind rephrasing in a different way?

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eleitl 2 points 6 days ago

Sure. What I meant to say is that while a small part of humanity is consuming an overproportional amount the whole of humanity would still be in massive overshoot (of the ecosystem carrying capacity) even if we removed the overconsumers. The reason why most of us exist is ephemeral (transiently elevated) carrying capacity thanks to the one-time bonanza of fossil fuels, which are already deserting us. Renewable energy infrastructure cannot be built out and maintained without fossil fuels and mining of materials which aren't even there to be mined.

We've painted ourselves into a corner and can't leave without soiling our socks with paint.

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tyranny 3 points 6 days ago

thanks for explaining, thanks for having the patience to clarify.
get rid of tyrants without population deletion, and people have some lean years. delete population without getting rid of tyrants, and the problem is as bad as ever. so i think focussing on population numbers is backing even further into a corner

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hanrahan 1 point 3 days ago

well, to me the "undesirable populations" are the ones over consuming, they do this deliberately and on purpose and much like if we're in a drought we would punish people for using too much water, similarly for over consumption.

I'd also suggest the articles 2200 is a flight of fancy, the tropics (billions) will be unlivable by 2100 and civilization will collapse some time this century.

Personally id like to see us contain the human population to 500million ... or less.

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HubertManne 2 points 6 days ago

problem with 4 billion is that might work if we did it when we hit 4 billion before we effed things up to badly and started using more renewable resources than could be regenerated in a year. It would certainly help now and if we are surviving at 2200 would be better than more.

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brucethemoose 2 points 6 days ago

By 2200, either civilization will have collapsed, or we’ll all be uploads, cybernetic, biologically enhanced or whatever that throws off the calculus of basically all those concerns.

I was worried about overpopulation for a bit, but (IMO) it turned out to be one of those “longer term” problems, and addressing it isn’t going to fix short terms ones: societal instability, spiraling damage to the planet, and massively inefficient resource use regardless of population.

And even if it were pressing, I’d argue we’re also “not ready” to shrink the population for a number of reasons, most prominently:

Automation isn’t yet at a point where it can replace working young people en masse.
Civil society is not at a point where we can handle it with stability.
There’s also a huge risk of empowering authoritarians with that, at this moment in history.

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HubertManne 1 point 6 days ago

why do we need to replace working young people. its a percentage difference. we are not ready because many people with the largest slices of the pie don't want a more modest amount and that means constant growth.

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brucethemoose 2 points 6 days ago

why do we need to replace working young people

By “young” I meant working age.

If birth rates go down, then more of the population is older and retired, proportionally. There are fewer young people to take care of each retired person.

This would have to be compensated for with some combination of:

Automation.
Less societal waste (like you said).
More statistically “productive” retired people (like in multi generational households where they help with family, just as an example).
Somewhat reduced quality of life for retired folks.

Personally, I’ve recently come to appreciate how expensive and labor intensive caring for older folks is. Rich or poor, they need a lot of help. So that job shifting to fewer and fewer working people would, IMO, be quite a burden. We are just not prepared for that, not quite yet.

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HubertManne 1 point 6 days ago

ok but you don't need growth. Just not to fast of decline. The growth just leads to exacerbation of the problem.

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brucethemoose 1 point 5 days ago

A steady population means an older one too.

Thats the tradeoff. The less growth there is, the older a population skews, demographically.

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bacon_pdp -1 points 7 days ago

They have that logic backwards. We achieve sustainability by adding 4 billion more thinking minds to solving problems

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eleitl 2 points 6 days ago

Given that there is no decoupling, and we're in massive overshoot given that fossils were a one-off, how is adding four billion of consumers not going to cause a die-off sooner and make it way worse? And you might have noticed that our collective ability to solve problems is degrading, while we've already been adding billions of these thinking minds.

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bacon_pdp 1 point 6 days ago

A starved mind is not the same thing as a thinking mind.

Our collective problems are the result of too many of the available minds being actively starved.

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eleitl 1 point 6 days ago

So who is starving these minds, and how do we unstarve them? Without adding a big resource footprint, mind.

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bacon_pdp 1 point 6 days ago

Modern capitalistic societies are the systems that are causing that. Because there is no direct profit in feeding or educating poor people.

As for how do we undo the damage and prevent future damage to our collective ability to think. That starts by giving children free education and access to educational resources and feeding them 3 meals a day (with lots of snacks in between).

Then we have to get people to stop being bootlickers to the billionaires and force the billionaires to pay an annual wealth tax to fund the elimination of income taxes for 95% of the population. (Who would use that additional money to improve their own lives and that would stimulate small businesses to help address the needs of the people and drive up working class wages)

Then we get universal healthcare and start using government infrastructure to fixing this situation.

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