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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

On the contrary, this is probably good news as we are nearing the carrying capacity of our planet. I don't think birth rates will ever decline to the extent that the global population collapses but a declining birth rate is really something to celebrate.

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It's only declining in the places where people give a shit about the Planet in these terms.

They "give a shit" but at the same time pollute a thousand times more (per capita). So one less American and one more Indian is a net positive for our green earth.

I'm not sure about that. USA has a lot of nature preserves and strict environment laws. 3rd world countries may experience runaway population growth where no land left undisturbed and nothing is preserved.

If we take CO2 it's another thing, but low emissions won't save you once all the biosphere is literally eaten.

That has nothing to do with cost to earth. We just export our pollution to seas and china.

If all countries start living like americans we'd need 5 times the surfaces area of earth.

Preserving biosphere is precious. "Cost to earth" is meaningless by itself - the planet isn't going anywhere. The only fragile thing here is biosphere.

I can see that you don't actually value Earth, just pity that it's so small you have to ration it.

One of the funnier aspects of the stereotypical basket of progressive views is that they end up holding their own societies to high standards and criticize qualities of those societies that were necessary for the fostering of their own worldview.

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