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Fish farming is just as bad as anything else IMO.

Theoretical alternatives to the status quo are:

* Higher taxes and fines for those using detrimental and high-risk farming practices, thus driving up the price of meat, fish and poultry to deter over-consumption, people don't need to eat animals 7 days a week. Food is simply "too cheap".

* Public education and further studies into mostly plant based diets so people aren't afraid to face the stigma and uncertainty about not having animals every night of the week. It's ok to cut back.

* Eating food grown or caught as close to your residence as possible.

* Mandatory food labelling of products, detailed information about the origin and production methods used to produce said product.

* Monetary incentives to have less children.

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> Monetary incentives to have less children

IMHO this isn't necessary in developed economies as the replacement rate is already below 2. [0]

Instead of paying people in developed countries to have fewer children, as the population of these countries would already be in decline were it not for immigration, we should spend the sane money on women's education and contraceptives in developing countries. [1]

Personally, my biggest concern is that the largest population growth is occurring in regions with the lowest levels of food security. Any disruption to the food supply in these areas will lead to large loss of life and/or geopolitical strife.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

[1] http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights1...

"Everywhere" is headed towards population stabilisation and constriction. UN predictions is a population decline towards the end of the century. First major "test" we'll see of those predictions is that China is expected to start seeing population decline in the 2030's or so.

Yes, but people in developed countries are also the biggest offenders. Even the most conscientious Americans have carbon footprints twice that of the global average. [0] And currently, the U.S. government pays citizens to have children. I have no idea if stopping that would have any impact, but slowly reducing the earned income tax credit is maybe a good place to start.

[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.h...

Largest population growth in areas with higher mortality risk. You think maybe the two are related? That the stress of not knowing whether your offspring will survive to adulthood is a biological trigger for having more children.

> You think maybe the two are related?

Personally, no. Latin America is statistically more dangerous than North America yet their population growth is not significantly larger.

The largest factor toward population growth has been shown many times to be the education level of women. More choices for women means fewer children. This is disccused in my source links above.

Everyone likes to have sex, people in developed countries are just better equipped to do it safely.

I think it's better described as "largest population growth in areas with no pension". When the only way to provide for your old age is to live with your children, you have significant reason to have several.

Several major religions in poor developing countries preach having more kids. They don't care about environmental impact or sustainability. They believe their God will provide.

How would we deal with that?

You don't. People should have more kids, period. What people don't get about the declining birthrate is that it leads to a graying of areas and a huge economic malaise as the elderly consume more and produce much less in terms of resources. This is part of the reason places like Japan or Italy are struggling so hard...they don't have enough native workers to support their aging population.

The demographic death spiral can be real. And if anything, there will be worse environmental impact simply because you have to use more invasive means to support an aging population. More factory farms since there are fewer, older workers, more resource intensive automation and robotics to take over things people did.

Religion is not to blame, for most include proper environmental stewardship. Unfortunately that theme is being ignored in the developed world. How about simply making the argument that it is morally wrong to destroy God's creation?

Develop methods for turning people into atheists.

Consumerism, may be?

Edit: not to turn them into atheists, but to reduce birth rate.

You cant. Its game theory- those religions preach only what people want to here. And they want to here, that one of there descendants make it- so if everybody puts more tickets into the lottery, one has to gear the gambling up to have the same chances.

Also to thwart any racists- no, this is not limited to poor country's or certain skin colors. Once the economy drops below a certain threshold, everyone goes full survival zombie with the Loop-Deformation. Proof: The Nazis turned europe into a white version of africa during WW2.

The Nazis had their economy ticking over in a very productive fashion, certainly better than before their rise. A successful economy doesn't make people behave well, although it certainly makes it easier to. What do you mean by 'a white version of Africa'? There aren't many parallels I can draw.

Emergence of warlords/partisan leaders (Yes, for freedom, liberty, king & country, fascism - im sure, in somalia and afghanistan they have great causes too )

Soldiers of the leash. War feeding the war. Refugees pouring back and forth.

Source is mostly anecdata:

My late grandfather was a Nazi truck-driver in France, Italy, eastern Europe (Hungary, Greece) and the stories he and his war companions told - are really very similar to those you get to hear from African refugees. My grandfather and his officer made a nice little extra by smuggling people and got sentenced into a "Straf-battalion" for taking advantage of the general lawlessness of the situation.

I know, i know- the popular Nazi image in TV presents a wicked law & order extremist, but where the war went - it really was quite different. There was a mixture of total lawlessness (as in "We dont care/expend resources on subhumans") and extreme military overreactions.

And before you claim that was just fascism at work, as if politics where just a program loaded into humans, no,the unraveling usually set on before the occupation got started.

In a ironic way, the Nazis and their homecoming war proofed that all humanity, disregarding of race, pushed beyond a certain breaking point - is equally wretched and desperate.

A zombie like animal, forgetting about tomorrow, trying to see the end of today at all costs. Not a beautiful sight, but one that offers a lot to understand and learn.

The good news is, once the stress is reduced - and the war has not gone on to long, preventing the education of the next generation- there is a way to recover.

The Nazi economy was ticking over through the means of confiscating wealth from people, and later on, through just straight-up murdering them from it. It wasn't 'very productive', it was short-term gains with no long-term sustainability.

Compare the economy they had in the mid or early war to that in the early thirties or late twenties. Germany was in chaos. The output of their economy was still increasing throughout the allied bombing campaign. Duplication was removed, competition reduced, production lines simplified and available models decreased. Vulnerabilities were addressed and production went up, fast. And yes, by every measure I can think of it wasn't sustainable, but it produced a lot in a short time with extremely difficult conditions.

Again- similar "economys" have been seen in war torn areas of the planet.

I don't think the religions preach what people want to hear. They built procreation into their belief system to make sure they will have bigger and bigger adherents. It works and many of those religions are much larger today than others without procreation preaching.

Religions allow you to force a rule-set on your neighbors and limit your descendants behavior, long after they reached adolescence. I would guess for a middle-aged person, in constant silent fear of loosing it all with one mighty divorce - or drug accident of son/daughter - this sounds attractive.

> Food is simply "too cheap"

This is so true in most civilized world. But same is its opposite, paradoxically.

Dunno how the whole system of gov subsidies and externalized costs and all work around the world, but meat is severely underpriced and vegetables are severely over-fucking-priced. Like geez, anywhere around western Europe if you go around buying ingredients for a decent salad you're like "wtf, a beef steak would lead to a cheaper meal!"

And after this, occasionally see that the cheapest vegetables of one type or another are produced like a freaking continent away! Don't tell me that transport energy that is mostly from burning fossil fuels doesn't have insane environmental costs that somehow got magically externalized out of the product price.

Maybe this also has something to do with underpriced oil or dubious trade treaties making half-a-planet-away exports too cheap, or "indirectly subsidizing" transoceanic shipping costs (hint: China, hint 2: all that burnt shipping diesel is similar to the pollution of the world's cars).

To top it all, in most developed countries increasing food prices would 99% likely result in increasing minimum wages because people will fight for them, and politicians will eventually give them... Really, if there's any way in which global economy needs to be "fixed" is by making products prices include the real damn costs, including environment ones!

Three words, my friend: "calories per acre".

Vegetables are not good calories sources; they are good nutrient sources. Grains are good calorie sources: your rice, your potatoes [not a grain], and especially your corn. Grains will yield 10-20 times the calorie per acre of vegetables. Grains are so insanely productive that, on a calories per acre basis, it is more land efficient to get your calories from corn-fed livestock than from vegetables.

Calories per acre are a big reason why vegetables cost more than meat. It is also why we grow different foods in different places. It is why basically all of our [the United States] potatoes come from Idaho: the volcanic soils there grow potatoes so well that it makes more sense to grow highly efficient potatoes in Idaho and corn in Kansas and ship them back and forth, because you'd get half as much corn in Idaho and half as many potatoes in Kansas.

[Replying in a different comment, because this is more confrontational and less informative, but I still think it is important to say.]

Re: food prices -> minimum wage, is your plan seriously to (somehow) raise food prices, so that the people who cannot afford to eat will riot / strike / protest for higher wages, so they don't starve to death?

> Don't tell me that transport energy that is mostly from burning fossil fuels doesn't have insane environmental costs

Why don't tell you that? Have you ever looked at the energy needed to transport full cargo containers? It's not a lot. You could fully internalize the cost by using renewable fuels and it would still be cheap.

> all that burnt shipping diesel is similar to the pollution of the world's cars

That's looking at a couple very specific pollutants, and could be fixed with a relatively tiny cost if there was enough political will.

Another theoretical alternative are lab-grown meats. It should be much more efficient to just grow steaks, instead of growing cows and throwing most of them away.

What part of the cow gets thrown away? My understanding is that every bit gets used.

Yeah, even in country where people are too squeamish to eat them as-is (unlike here, where recipes directly include cow hoof, liver, brains, etc), I can't believe the food industry doesn't shove into some processed blob.

People don't need to eat animals at all. You can live perfectly healthy as a vegetarian or vegan. The more I read about what goes on in industrial farming the happier I am to have changed my diet.

> * Mandatory food labelling of products, detailed information about the origin and production methods used to produce said product.

What if I Don't Care.

There's this weird assumption that information/education will lead people to share your viewpoint. It won't. I am fully aware of the impact that cattle farming has on the environment. I still eat beef whenever I want with literally zero concern.

I know that I can live without meat. I know that it's entirely possible to eat food that has a lower impact on the environment. It doesn't mean that I'm going to do either of those things. That doesn't make me uninformed or ill-educated. It just means my "utility function" is different to yours.

>There's this weird assumption that information/education will lead people to share your viewpoint.

Is there? I don't think anyone thinks labelling is going to magically make people who don't care make different choices, they just think it will allow people who do care to actually make choices at all.

You're one person. Adding nutrition information to labels isn't meant to change your behavior, specifically. It's meant to change lots of people's behavior.

> It just means my "utility function" is different to yours.

Most people include "social recognition" into their utility function. Spreading the idea that "eating too much beef is 'bad'" might actually alter the behavior of those who want to be "'good' citizens".

(please note I'm not advocating for the method here ; although I certainly see how it could work, I have no idea how much it actually does)

> Monetary incentives to have less children.

Some countries are already below the necessary births to renovate the generations, you want to reduce it even further?

Why not having suicide booths, it's faster to lead humans to extinction.

> Why not having suicide booths, it's faster to lead humans to extinction.

Actually, many people (myself included) advocate for the right, and plan for themselves, euthanasia as the best, most humane alternative to the current nightmare/torture regime that makes up end of life, hospice, and terminal disease care. This seems like just a logical idea at first, but nothing puts it quite in perspective like experiencing these things in your own family.

The fact that euthanasia is one small way to speed up the reduction of human population down to less environmentally destructive levels is a small benefit.

Tell me are you going offer these monetary incentives in Nigeria and Pakistan or in Italy and Japan or both?

   Eating food grown or caught as close to your residence as possible.

gigantic rabbit farms

Could use a hyphen there, but I'd go either way

> * Monetary incentives to have less children.

Is this some kind of a joke? How will society support itself with fewer kids?

How will society support itself with fewer kids?

By increasing productivity, as it has been doing over the past few centuries, and not increasing waste of resources proportionally, unlike what it has been doing over the past few centuries.

> Monetary incentives to have less children.

Gross.

Why is that? Australia did (or still does?) have monetary incentives to have more children, completely backwards...

I think that is maybe distasteful. A monetary incentive to not have children is like advocating state-sponsored neutering of people. And since its money, who do you think would be affected for such things? the rich?

So basically its the very concept of paying poor people not to procreate, so that the current existing people have a 'nicer time' (which is actually also economically incorrect).

Its super gross.

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