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Comment by omegaworks | Hacker News Reader

>It's really sad and I think it's especially sad that the core problem - overpopulation - is pretty much never discussed.

Sorry bud, it's not... by a long shot. https://twitter.com/SofiePelsmakers/status/91776466335766118...

"Overpopulation" pushes a problem that is actually caused by the few richest among us onto the poorest.

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The tiny minority that owns almost all the money does not also eat almost all the biomass.

You're right, the tiny minority that owns almost all the money eats animals that eat almost all the biomass.

You vastly underestimate the resources needed to produce beef, pork and chicken.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3876224/

Non-vegans are hardly a tiny minority. Life-long debtors who nonetheless have access to as many two-dollar-burgers as they can stomach far outnumber the few that own almost everything.

I'm not sure I understand. The chart you link to shows that the top 10% produce ~90% of CO2, but says nothing about the impact of population reduction on that dynamic. Are you assuming those individuals will be untouchable or just saying that reducing lifestyle emissions among that group is more effective?

If you culled randomly, "thanos style" as the original poster describes, you would eliminate about 50% of the population in each subgroup. When only the top 10% subgroup contributes about 50% of the emissions, you will only eliminate 5% of the emissions, with half the population gone.

In reality, eugenics programs cull from the people considered "undesirable" by the elite in a society. The bottom 90% in that chart would likely be targeted and so the impact you'd have on the environmental problem would be even further limited.

I don't think this is the same thing, it's CO2 emissions, which of course are vastly greater in rich northern countries with a majority of the power plants, vehicles, heating, industry.

Biomass loss seems to be largely due to agriculture/fishing. Of course, again rich countries are consuming much more per capita by eating more meat etc, but what are the overall impacts, especially taking into account agricultural practices, polution-control practices, etc, around the world?

I think agricultural technology, especially factory farming (hydroponics etc), lab-grown-meat, on-land fish farming, etc, could play a big role in future reduction of our footprint - along with more responsible population growth, healthier eating habits/more vegetarian diets, worldwide ecological regulation/certification/enforcement etc.

Those top 10%, that's all of us. I would not want to live like bottom 50% really.

For CO2 emissions US has 2x per capita emissions of EU. Standard of living in EU is higher.

Yet even European lifestyle is anything but sustainable base on IPCC report.

To the original commentor's point, certain people, institutions, & pools of capital have inordinate influence over the policies, politics, & markets that determine how food, energy, & goods are produced & consumed. We have had a surge of global scale projects, such as the green revolution & multi-national corporations, which comes with global issues.

If we had more localized economies, there would be less need to transport all sorts of goods across the world; and there would be more employment. Redundancy would be beneficial to local cultures, as it encourages local autonomy. Instead, we have increasing centralization, which has yielded the same degregation with increasing scale. Maybe we need to rethink some of our presuppositions.

I have a feeling that, even if the ecological costs of transportation were factored into price, centralization of production and globalization would still be more efficient than producing the same goods in many different places.

International trade is also a strong check against war, so that is something to consider.

> globalization would still be more efficient than producing the same goods in many different places.

Not necessarily true in all cases. Globalization is more efficient in transferring wealth, power, & information from small entities to large entities. As far as advocating for, providing value, & enriching local communities, naked Globalization has had a dismal record.

Good fences make good neighbors.

http://necsi.edu/research/social/scienceofpeace.pdf

Re: the check against war, that is also something to be questioned. We have continuous "low intensity" warfare against populations around the world, where modern weapons are used against civilian populations. This includes biomedical technology in favor of traditional food & medicine.

Also consider that the conditions for the major world wars (& the cold war) were created by globalists who operate trans-nationally. Something to consider...

I think a better source of information for your point is the actual article linked to in the twitter feed:

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/26/1635652...

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