If we are running out of resources and increasing pollution does a smaller population not help with this? As a species we have shrunk in numbers before and clearly increased again. Really keen to understand more about this.
In: 2155
First of all we are not running out of resources. We have done that maths. This planet can sustainably sustain 11-15 billion people depending on who you ask. If you ask a certain brand of people they’ll say 4 billion *white* people is what the earth can sustain. Our planet can not sustain 1 billion people who consume like wealthy westerners do.
Problem is not that we can’t feed or shelter people. We can. Issue is that of logistic. Those who can grow food can’t really get it to those who can’t. India has a massive food surplus, however lack of internal logistics means that there are places locally that starve. India has most arable land in farming use, 2nd being Ukraine if I recall right. About 3rd of global farmland is used just to feed animals instead of people. We are not running out of resources! And if we are, then it is the fault of us wealthy westerners! Although China is doing their best to catch up on the whole wasteful consumerism and just like in the game on capitalism, they will do it better and bigger.
Population decline is really only an issue when it comes to dealing with the older generation. If there is 1 young person for every 2 geriatrics, then sooner or later most of the population is just and only going to be taking care of the elderly.
All out issues of *pollution* and *farmland*, can be traced down to that 3rd of our food production feeds animals that make up only 5th of world wide calories. It is one thing to grow cows or goats for milk on places where you can’t grow crops or feed them with food scraps. It is anther thing having an industrialised system of growing them at maximum economic efficiency so you can have a 1$ cheeseburger. Which are manufactured at such volume that McD doesn’t even put preservatives to the meat because it gets frozen and consumed so quickly that preservatives would just cut to the margins, cold chain is cheaper. And I eat meat mind you!
We are still blowing up mountains to get coal to boil water so we can get electricity, so we can order shoes from Amazon that we then return because they weren’t the correct size; that then gets thrown to an incinerator at Amazon returns unit because it is cheaper to do that than reshelfing logistics. We drill for fossil fuels so we can run computers to calculate complex math problems so we can trade imaignary currency and pictures of ugly apeas. Bitcoin uses about 0,5% of world energy production; Crypto as a whole have been estimated to use about 1%, and these numbers were few years out.
We are not running out of anything on this planet… We are just wasting lot of it on stupid shit. Like google calculating 100 trillion digits of Pi… cryptocurrency… Bluetooth connected saltshakers… Juicero… electric cars where you can replce the horn with a fart noise…
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