China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/china-great-gree...
I say this is mainly about China because Africa has modified their green wall project and instead of planting billion trees from East coast to West coast, they are helping communities to thrive by planting trees and reviving land.
China is crazy in this sense, there is a thick patch of shrubs that now border the Gobi desert and mainland China. By 2030 it'll be the largest manmade plantation on Earth.
edit: 66 billion trees planted so far!
Whenever the Chinese government does something, don’t assume it will be sustainable by default.
Not only that, there are concerns around lack of biodiversity in the trees being planted: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160907125303.h...
The West tried it, not knowing because it had never been done before, and found it had issues.
I would expect the West to be criticised as much, if not more so for doing the same thing today.
Later edit: This forest which got knocked out during a recent wind-storm in the Italian Dolomites [1] looks like being an "artificial" one, at least judging by how the remaining trees all look the same and are almost geometrically positioned. The article does indeed say that the forest was "centuries-old" but I think that only better underlines what I was saying, that the West has been repeating the same and same mistake (i.e. "dumb", non-thought out reforestation) for centuries now. It's too bad that with the recent climate-related changes our tampering with the ecosystem is really shown for what it is: a really, really dumb and non-thought out action.
[1] https://www.italymagazine.com/news/storms-italys-dolomites-r...
Edit: In response to your edit. Are you sure that isn't native woodland? I would expect the higher reaches of a mountain to be pine trees. The article mentions Stradivarius, violins are made of spruce amongst other woods.
Plus those forests are obviously somewhat sustainable, the Chinese plantings are dying within a few years.
Hard to tell 100% without being present on site but that's my guess, yeah. I've very rarely seen "natural" forests being completely wiped out like this as a result of strong winds, the worst that can happen is some older trees being knocked down here and there, but, as I said, I've not yet seen "natural" forests being completely knocked down as a result of one wind-storm.
I also suspect those were planted forests because you cannot use that wood as raw material for Venice's Arsenal for centuries past without planting something in return. I suspect the planting continued even after the Arsenal itself and wood-shipping in general were no longer a thing.
I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.
Venice would have been very selective about the wood it would have cut for ships etc, you can't just cut any old wood. It needs to be knot free, be straight, or have just the right curvature. They weren't clear felling vast swathes, then replanting. I'm not even sure the was conscious planting at all.
"Intact Forest Landscapes" seems to exclude any human made forest. So are you against all human planting of forests?
> I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.
https://www.dw.com/image/45302299_401.png
Generally you have "untouched" as in oldgrowth/primary forest and not being a secondary forest, which takes a few hundred years.
The lack of biodiversity is a major concern, since we often take shortcuts by planting cuttings, which are genetic clones, or by using an initial pool that isn't sufficiently diverse.
An artificial forest is better than no forest, off course, but wild, ancient forests are more precious, since they are living DNA libraries.
Fun story: Beijing kids are all required to plant trees on school organized trips (which they must also pay to plant). So they go to places in the hinterland that are designated for tree planting, and plant their trees. After each school group leaves, the trees are promptly dug out so they can be planted by the next group of kids.
Green theater.
News in 10-20 years: massive wildfires decimate Africa. It's pointless and dangerous to have more trees than the waterbed can support. California re-learns this lesson nearly every year.
This guy sort of proved it in concept: https://vimeo.com/25401444
Cities are seeming increasingly more able to be proactive than countries.
Encourage local cities to one by one electrify the bus network and this effect goes global. It’s obvious tangible action that citizens can demand and mayors can visibly deliver.
Game for those playing at home, do a search on what make of buses are used in your home city. Search for if that manufacturer is trialing electric buses. Interested to see what you find.
[1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/dallas-deploys-electric...
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2017/08/17/orla...
Albuquerque returned BYD buses because of problems with range not performing as advertised. https://www.abqjournal.com/1246094/abq-rejecting-all-byd-art...
Battery-electrics still have major issues with range; buses cannot last a full day on a single charge, and midday charging takes too long. And if it gets cold or the route has hills, you're completely out of luck. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/electric-bus-...
eBikes with mid-drive motors like the BBSHD also have this kind of torque, it can be really fun to ride them due to that. With electric motors, you choose between torque and top RPMs based on how thick your wire is, the thicker the copper the more torque you'll see (and consequently, lower top speed).
A typical fairly modern city bus is geared to top out at low highway speed. Having the maximum amount of acceleration is possible for a vehicle that is pulling in and out of traffic all day which is why they are geared so low. Buses will happily roast the tires from a stop (an impressive sight, I highly recommend) if not electronically prevented from doing so peak power is basically available as fast as the transmission can shift down a gear or two.
Acceleration in practice is primarily limited by the cargo's propensity to complain and secondarily by the coefficient of friction between the tires and the ground. Regardless of EV vs ICE these limitations are going to result in electronic controls that prevent the driver from getting an instant response when the hammer the throttle it
Maybe on a long, hill climb near top speed you'd run out of power but that's a peak power limitation issue and EVs will have it too. Commercial people movers are only ever lacking for power when they are intentionally spec'd out that way.
The "muh torque" circle jerk really isn't an advantage of EVs except when you're intentionally making a lopsided comparison (Model S vs Civic). Besides, as much as I'd love to see a bus twist and lift up a front tire leaving a stop I assure you the average person does not want to be subject to that kind of acceleration so both the EV bus and the ICE bus are going to get an electronic nanny between the go pedal and the power source.
There's only one deficiency with EVs compared to ICEs, and that's energy storage. On every other metric, they easily win.
Trolleybuses are great for hills because they are constantly drawing power from the grid. It’s why Seattle has committed to trolleybus expansion for its hilly network.
http://www.vdlbuscoach.com/News/News-Library/2018/Europa-s-g...
I use these on a regular basis, for urban environments, electric busses combined with overhead superchargers at the end-of-line terminals work really well.
Every transportation agency in the US that's purchased BYD vehicles has had major issues with the vehicles. Most agencies have cut short their orders, and a number of agencies cancelled them altogether. (LA's Metro system also experimented with BYD buses. During their short tenure in operation, the BYD buses were less reliable than buses that were over two decades old. The contract was suspended pending review.)
> Encourage local cities to one by one electrify the bus network and this effect goes global. It’s obvious tangible action that citizens can demand and mayors can visibly deliver.
This is known as Libertarian Municipalism. ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Murray_Bookchin#/Libertarian_mun... )
A small book on the matter: http://new-compass.net/sites/new-compass.net/files/Bookchin%...
Electric also makes more sense in Seattle because 70% of its electrify comes from hydro.
The overhead lines do force King County Metro to avoid changing routes (a boon for local riders), and are 50% faster at getting the bus up to speed after a stop. Short of something wrecking the overhead lines on most of a route, I doubt they'll be retired soon.
A good option (which is being implemented in Lyon) is IMC buses, battery-supplemented trolleys (or electric buses with pantographs): they can go off-grid for segments where the grid hasn't been built (not enough traffic or whatever) and it allows for spot-charging at bus stops.
Seattle used to have a lot of dual electric diesel buses that would be diesel outside of the downtown bus tunnel and then catch onto overhead lines before entering the tunnel. However, this didn’t really work out very well (hooking up to overhead wires was error prone). They just use NG buses these days
http://www.cbi.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/milton-keynes-wir...
The number of buses is set to increase after the initial successful trial: https://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/more-electric-buses-on-t...
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...
http://telecoms.com/487246/milton-keynes-set-to-be-first-uk-...
I am actually going to email local polticians today. My back-of-the-envelope is that in in my city, converting the bus fleet is equal to converting 1/3 of the private vehicle fleet. They are spending a lot here on plans that don't have a tenth of that potential.
Ireland (where I live) has missed its emmissions target. We're already paying penalties and the current "plan" to get better fast is a huge (>40%) subsidy for €50k executive perk cars, on top of standard EV incentives. Using this article's bus/EV fuel savings ratio (33/1), you have about 33€20k = €660,000 per bus* in your "better than this terrible plan" budget.
From the comments, it seems that e-buses aren't at the "just buy some and done" point. But (like you imply), buses have all sorts of advantages over cars that make this a great target for meaningful short term improvement.
As you say, plans can be implemented by cities. Local politicians talking about private EVs is mostly cheap talk. They can't do much about it. Buses are a decision they make. Also, fuel cost savings are achieved rapidly as buses work full time. You're not paying now for fuel savings in 12 years. Charging infrastructure can be centralized. As specialized utlilitarian vehicles, buses can make all sorts of compromises. Some routes don't need fast buses. It seems downright rational.
I’m all for buses and taxis turning electric to reduce the diesel fumes in cities.
If you were on the bus its engine probably started a minute later, it's still an improvement, and I assume that environmentally not spewing fumes at bus stops helps a little with local air quality, but it's not usually an electric bus.
To put some numbers behind that it seems only ~1% of London's buses are electric whereas about a third are hybrid.
Most cars as personal vehicles(unless they are in a ride hailing service or taxis) will have a typical utilization closer to 2-8% of the time as they drive for maybe 1 or 2 hours a day.
I have similarly found many oil "demand models" not using "electric miles traveled" as a key metric and rather using something more simple like "# of vehicles replaced". Utilization is important, but often ignored or not thought about.
CO2 is a much harder case because of the pervasive oil lobby.
In ten years the world is going to look a lot different geopolitcially.
But it’s a big country, so change like this takes time to see the macro effects. You can see it all playing out on the ground if you go in person, but the air won’t totally clean up until power generation fully transitions - I’d give it a decade to be safe (but ask locals now and they’ll tell you it’s at least gotten better).
Meanwhile our president here in the USA is unraveling the EPA and defunding Dept of Energy, even as we’re #1 polluters of the world. I think we are in no position to talk on this one.
All it takes to find this is a little time and an open mind.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/china-great-gree...
That’s...a hell of a lot of trees. The article mentions that a lot die without human intervention, which is pretty unfortunate. Makes you wonder if there’s a more surefire way to prevent deserts from expanding...if there is, it seems like China has the will to do it.
I dislike the dictatorship in China but this effort is unparalleled.
That is the problem with top down authoritarian directives, execution is lacking. Follow through is lacking as the government declares success after they sign the order and then forget about it after patting themselves on the back.
That said, I know literally nothing about the Gobi desert ecosystem and whether planting a forest will have the desired effect. Interestingly (to me at least), right at the time that the Edo period in Japan was starting, Japan had cut down most of its trees. One of the effects was that the runoff from mountains was much faster and carried less mineral content. This, in turn, reduced the ability for algae to grow in the shallow regions of the sea around Japan, leading to a very real possibility of mass starvation. Somehow somebody realised this and convinced the Shogun to put a moratorium on logging. Despite the really huge hardship this had on the people, it's likely to have saved Japan. By the 18th century Japan had developed fairly advanced silviculture. Some historians in Japan consider this to be a practical miracle given the very limited knowledge that people had about ecology in the Edo period.
I'm hoping that our cultures will enter a new period where we start to understand that this kinds of "ecological engineering" is necessary for the health of our societies. Whether or not the planting of trees in the Gobi desert is effective or not (I have no idea), the idea that we need to do these kinds of things is very promising and I hope that whatever successes and failures there are will be fed back into a system of refinement for the next try.
Pls provide proof. I've seen a list plant 8k trees across a state. I've seen anNgo plant bio diverse forest where I live. So I'd like to know the context that you are talking about
Trees however require a certain amount of water to function. You can do better by planting grass which can survive better on less rain long term by going dormant. However eventually there isn't enough water for grass to grow either.
Of course everything depends on location. Different locations have different soils, rainfall, temperature... You cannot treat every location on earth as the same.
They actually reached a regime where more reduction can increase the pollution because some pollutants react destructively with each other (eg VOCs, O3, NOx).
Whereas China can just dig a storage facility in the desert or something; they can disregard locals' complaints easily thanks to being a totalitarian state. I mean so is the US but it's an ineffective one.
Sadly that has very little impact in the face of the US's epidemic NIMBY-ism. Yucca is dead, and the US is completely opposed to reprocessing.
Central quote:
"The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported nuclear power development."
"The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs make nuclear a risky investment."
Indonesia and Malaysia are taking the biodiesel approach with decent amount of success at cutting their fx spend [1].
Why China cant pursue something similar to Indonesia and Malaysia probably has to do with their Ag policies/capabilities/climate.
[0] https://ycharts.com/indicators/china_oil_consumption
[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Nikkei-Markets/Mala...
China plans to push 100% ethanol fuel at the end of 2020.
I see that they had a goal of 10% by volume[0], I'd really like to see the numbers behind how they'll get that, compared to where there are at now on that. I have my doubts on that number or on any serious execution, sounds dead on arrival:
"By 2020 China wants all gasoline sold in the country to contain 10% ethanol by volume, which is what the United States currently mandates with its Renewable Fuel Standard. Building an ethanol industry is a necessary first step to building the Chinese bioeconomy, but there's a long way to go. China currently produces about 800 million gallons per year (mgpy) of ethanol, with about 500 mgpy derived from corn. Based on expected gasoline demand of 45 billion to 50 billion gallons, to meet the 10% ethanol blending rules in 2020, the country would need between 4 billion and 5 billion gallons of ethanol per year.
It will be nearly impossible to site, build, and ramp up enough new production capacity to supply demand from domestic production alone by 2020. That's why many industry experts expect the Chinese government to turn to ethanol imports to fill the gap -- and only the American market has enough spare capacity to cash in on the opportunity."[1]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/china-plans-nationwide-use-o...
[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/05/07/china-is-unlikely-...
I believe price per unit oil will decline until supply is withdrawn to stabilize at a lower value, which may or may not happen. The total market value for gasoline will shrink.
If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers.
Yes they will. Hyperbole is unnecessary and harmful when the real projected outcomes are already bad enough.
>If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers.
10x is highly unlikely. At 450kg of CO2 per barrel and even $50/ton of CO2 offset costs that’s about $25 additional per barrel, which puts it at a lower cost than the 2007 era peaks.
Wouldn't you expect a carbon tax to be similar in price to the cost to get the carbon back out of the air?
CO2 released per barrel of oil (when converted to various fuels and burned) appears to be around 300-450 kg [1][2], but we can round up to 500 kg to be conservative and make the math easier.
The cost to take it back out of the air appears to run between $30-$200/tonne depending on how you do it [3][4][5]. I think it's worth speculating that this cost is likely to drop precipitously as the demand and scale at which we need to do it increases, but we can very conservatively stick with $200/tonne for now.
Crude oil is at about $59/barrel today. $200 * 0.5 tonnes = $100. So with the most conservative estimates, it wouldn't quite triple the cost.
[1] https://pyrolysium.org/how-much-co2-produced-by-burning-one-...
[2] http://numero57.net/2008/03/20/carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-...
[3] https://www.c2es.org/document/the-cost-of-u-s-forest-based-c...
[4] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/19/carbon-capture-expensiv...
- Increasing total plant biomass increases the amount if carbon trapped in that portion of the cycle at any given time
- When plants decay or are eaten, some of the carbon compounds created are solids. Carbon itself is not the problem, carbon-based gases are.
- Some portion of plant biomass is harvested by humans for durable purposes, such as wood and textiles. These uses hold carbon for much longer.
I don't know what the total affect of these is, but they shouldn't be ignored.
This is a very dangerous misconception and should not be spread around. It is like saying "I don't have to worry about my emissions, because someone else will clean them up for me". Do you have/support enough plant life to clean up your own emissions?
If the goal of the tax is to fund carbon removal and if that removal can be done immediately after emission without any damage being done to the environment, then yes. Otherwise you'd want to factor in the damage done.
If someone injected you with snake venom and argued that they should only be fined the amount it costs you for antivenom without consideration of the damage to your body, you would not accept that.
People will drive more, or buy bigger cars, or it fly more, etc. etc...
The price of Oil I think is going nowhere but up even as we deploy electric vehicles, because there are a lot of new people coming into the new economy and they want cars, they want to fly etc.
The ability to navigate the road freely -- trolley buses often have trouble circumnavigating badly parked cars in their way, sometimes causing the driver to get out to reattach the "prongs" to the wires.
Also, trams are somewhat prone to "tram jams" caused by one faulty streetcar blocking the railway. And they simply cannot get around a badly parked car.
However I have seen trams broken down temporarily (a couple of times in the last 7 years of taking 2 trips daily) but these get resolved surprisingly quickly with minimal fuss. Additionally I've only seen a Trolley lose its connection a couple of times, and the resolution took about 1 minute.
This is of course heavily based on personal experience, if you have experience to the contrary I'd be curious where this is. A friend complained a bit about Trolleys in Wellington needing frequently reconnected, but I don't know how common that is or whether they just had some bad luck
That's not really the why, at least not here. The shortcomings of trams (including derailing and the inability to maneuver past stuck or badly parked cars) are handled by a 24h emergency crew dedicated for just that. I think they move on average less than one car per day, but those missions are much more frequent during wintertime.
Trams are much more prone to failure than buses.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-electric/chin...
Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to deal with reality?
The US is by far the largest consumer of oil and we love large vehicles.
https://qz.com/1344537/by-2020-suvs-could-make-up-50-of-us-c...
Centralising electricity generation makes it easier to switch to renewables later on. Also, higher grid usage means more investment. (China is already 24% renewable, about twice the USA.)
No-one living in a city is going to question why they’re switching diesel buses to remotely coal generated electricity.
Why are the ships so emissive?
[hydrocarbons] + O2 -> CO2 + H2O
"Dirtier" burning would result in less CO2 emission.
The OP is misinformed with regards to the “6 largest ships” claim and the “CO2” claim — as covered elsewhere in comments on this article.
1. True: 16 of the world’s largest ships produce as much _sulfur_ pollution as all the world’s cars.[1]
2. False: "How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world", headline from Daily Mail.[2]
3. False: "world's 6 largest shipping tankers produce more CO2 than all the world's personal vehicles combined", from OP.
While SOx and NOx pollution is extremely bad, they're not as culpable in causing respiratory diseases and climate change, and that's why legislative action has been slow coming.
[1] https://www.lngtransfer.com/news/the-16-biggest-ships-produc...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-...
Similarly I can smell NOx out of some modern diesels. Reminds me a jar of nitric acid I used to keep under my desk, until the lid rusted thru...
> Passenger Cars: 749.4[2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/mar/03/travelse...
[2] https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100USI5.pdf
According to the data it appears I am not completely wrong. The maritime transportation sector is of roughly equal CO2 contribution to the US passenger vehicle fleet in 2007. According to the trend indicated by The Guardian in the next 15-20 years (from a 12 year old article, which would be a few years from now) maritime transportation emissions could rise by 75% while the US passenger auto fleet emissions remain flat thereby indicating a slice of tankers contribute more CO2 emissions than passenger vehicles.
These sources weren't hard to find or read, so I am not sure why you think my statement is false.
Of course, that stil only lets you run under power during the day!
Using the latest solar tech in a space-conscious deployment I would assume you could probably 2x that at least. So we’re in the realm of 5% of energy cost.
Give the technology another 10 years and where would we be? Unfortunately panels are already astoundingly efficient going from about 15% in the 60s to 20-25% today. In the lab we can approach 50% so there’s probably one more doubling.
To cover 10% of the energy cost of moving that much cargo just from the sun is mind boggling to me.
It makes me wonder if a different ship design which would scale down to have more surface area per volume, driving the solar power factor up, could actually work economically.
Since the trend has just been bigger and bigger super-freighters this would be an interesting shift.
Is a Tesla cargo ship in our future?
The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions.
To my knowledge personally owned vehicles account for a similar percentage of total CO2 output, so that number while small is a red herring. People tend to generate more CO2 per capita as a result of air conditioning than from the vehicles they drive.
An air conditioner typically consumes in the neighborhood of 4kW, less than half the day, less than half the year.
So, being generous, 6000kWh annually for air conditioning.
Gasoline has the equivalent of 34kWh/gallon, which implies air conditioning uses the equivalent of 176 gallons of gas per year.
The average person in the US drives over 13,000 miles per year. The average car gets 25 mpg. That is 520 gallons.
That is not true globally. I live in Kuwait, which can get up to 140F during the day in the summer.
At any rate if you want numbers (since people are crying about research without doing any of their own) here are some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19438999
Another way to look at (and there is a lot of data on this) is which nations produce the most CO2 per capita and then work backwards asking why that is.
Also, most the countries here have a higher than average population density compared to the global average due to a small geographic footprint.
Yes, cars do produce more CO2 than air conditioning, but in the context of CO2 emissions, you can't just compare "equivalent of gas gallons".
First, not all electricity is generated from fossil fuels (63% in the US, much less e.g. in many parts of Europe).
Second, to produce 6000 kWh of electricity from fossil fuels, you have to burn much more than the theoritical amount, because the efficiency of conversion is much lower than 100% (although in cold climates you may use combined heat & electricity production).
In the end these are irrelevant details, as we must stop burning fossil fuels anyway. Every part of the chain is important, and the argument "but x produces even more CO2 than y, so I keep using y" is of course stupid.
If you want to find the exact number that cars account for, I'm sure you can find it. Just don't use whatever source you got that initial CO2 claim from.
A lot of thise optimizations are a sort of cool hyperoptimization that only make sense because of the scale of things. I wonder if electrification, likely through subsidies, would suddenly mean we’d see the tanker industry “weaponizing” weather models to predict which ports can provide cheap wind or solar energy. Or aggressively pushing the battery stacks because even a 0.01% margin is suddenly very attractive.
It is even debatable if the US using nuclear power on their subs/warships is wise. It is great for natural disasters relief (mobile power plant) but terrifying if the US ever loses one.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_navy#Accidents_involvi...
A reactor contains way more material, probably several tons at least. If it's been operating, it contains lots of nasty, highly-radioactive fission and decay products. Reactors also like to go all melty and sometimes (non-nuclear) explodey when they fail, although I suspect that's less of a factor when it's underwater.
But they are phasing out high sulfur HFO in 2020 I think ships are restricted to 0.5% sulfur.
Trains are 185km/L per ton, and ships get about double that. The only more efficient method is bicycling.
Electrification won’t do much to help because batteries are so big and heavy you’re basically shipping batteries instead of cargo back and forth. There’s been recent advancement in adding sails though, that actually make non-trivial differences. [1]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/08/31/maersk-tankers-installs-...
Curbing population growth.
We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire":
X Murder
X Rape
X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving
X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death
X In some countries: Being with whom you love
So why are we resisting laws against "Making babies whenever you want" and not even discussing them without annoyed dismissals and instant shutdowns?
Is it because the people who shape the zeitgeist — First world countries — have yet to experience the horrors of rampant overpopulation?
People who vehemently argue against population control, ought to own up to the fact that we should then guarantee access to food, shelter and healthcare for every new human.
You shouldn't expound one human right only to continue to prevent everyone from many other rights.
What will conjure up the constant resources and space required for the constant growth required by the economy?
Probably the sun and small scale fusion for at least the next thousand years or so. Eventually other stars/large scale fusion/some type of energy production we haven't discovered yet.
>and space
There is enormous amounts of room left on earth. Everyone on earth could have an acre of land to themselves with 10x the current population, and that completely ignores multi-level construction (either above or below the surface). But long term there is a lot of space outside of earth.
Bonkers - if we are to believe the environmental lobby (and I generally do), we are already destroying much of the biosphere. You can't have it both ways! Either things get worse for everyone, or humanity starts to control itself.
Controlling itself doesn't have to mean population control. It just has to mean taking care of our environment in a sustainable way. The number of people we have been able to support in a sustainable way has increased by several orders of magnitude over the past tens of thousands of years and I don't see a compelling reason that trend needs to stop. Climate change isn't tied to population, it's tied to greenhouse gas emissions. We already have the technology demonstrating that we don't need to emit greenhouse gasses.
Extinction of other species is also tied to deforestation, mining, pollution (chemical, light and noise) as well as hunting and accidents. All of that only increases as our population grows.
Food, shelter, healthcare, education, sex.
There are already numerous examples of authority stepping in to “save people from themselves.”
Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem we face today: climate change.
Climate change is not caused by overpopulation, but rather by the industrial output of developed countries. These countries, except for China, are not densely populated and have lower rates of population growth than the rest of the world because obtaining contraception is legal and convenient.
On top of that, regulating reproduction is a violation of the most basic human freedoms.
> Dire predictions
Those are not only predictions, but existing examples. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.
> regulating reproduction is a violating of the most basic human freedoms.
We regulate MANY things that are also basic human freedoms.
Slums are not caused by overpopulation. They are caused by poverty and lack of opportunity, often abetted by bad government policy. Tiny countries with small populations have slums.
Many of their problems are caused by overcrowdedness, and there are few ways to fix that without stealing even more space from nature and other species.
As for poverty and lack of opportunity, what do you propose would fix that? Honest question, because this will lead to more problems that need to be pointed out.
At the expense of causing massive climate change, it is worth noting. The era of our ability to "increase the world's carrying capacity" may be coming to an end.
I really, really hope I'm wrong and we're able to get Climate Change under control, but we are heading in the exact opposite direction right now.
Not all developed countries are densely populated, but many are. Netherland and South Korea rank among the most densely populated countries in the world.
Honestly, the problem is going to solve itself. We're going to see devastating natural disasters and famines. We're going to see causalities like we've never seen. We're going to see massive die-offs of the poor in countries that are in the direct path- coastal countries, Africa, and middle east.
I know I'm going to get hate for this, but the US and other western countries are going to have to face the realities that they are going to need to lock down their borders as we're going to have massive refugee problems. I don't agree with Trump 90% of the time, but he is putting in place a framework that will be used in the next 10 years to keep the onslaught of refugees. America has it good. We can survive the storm, but most of the world will not be so lucky.
And words cannot express what I feel. This whole thing sucks. It's going to hurt. And it's the kind of thing where we can't save everyone.
A massive claim. Care to support it?
As far as I was aware, much of America's success is a simple accident of history, notably: having a massive virtually unoccupied continent with enormous unexploited natural resources, a single unified market with single currency, having no land border with a hostile foreign entity capable of posing a genuine threat, and taking advantage of (or as some argue deliberately creating the circumstances for) the rest of the world being smashed by two world wars.
There's a lot of evidence of this. Look at crime rates in Germany and Sweden before and after their mass immigration import.
And regarding limiting population growth, what solution could possible be there that would be acceptable in a liberal democracy (i.e. does not require authoritarian regime controlling your every move, or the biggest genocide in history of mankind)?
This is because educated women choose to have fewer kids later.
Luckily this solution is not only effective but is also very much acceptable in a liberal democracy!
You left out strong social safety net, but that is key: children are literally people's old age and disability support mechanism when there isn't a sufficiently reliable public one.
It turn out that education and empowerment of this kind (especially where you can show women that their children will survive and that everyone can get an education and a job) will naturally lead to lower fertility rates. Apparently women aren’t all hormone driven baby factories (who knew?) and given a voice in the matter will generally prefer fewer children (and more time to pursue life outside raising babies).
So if you support zero or negative population growth, you can do a lot worse than donating to Plan International and other charities specialising in education and support of women in developing nations.
You can empower people (especially women, a commonly oppressed class), save the world from overpopulation, uncover the next generation of genius-entrepreneur, and do this all without being labelled a villain.
As the environmental disaster gets worse, we will end up sacrificing more species in the pursuit of safety for our own. We might mourn the necessary sacrifice in passing, but ultimately the surviving humans will justify everything in the name of one more day.
Is your plan to depopulate the wealthy countries responsible for CO2 emissions who already have a replacement level birthrate?
Or is it to artificially prevent population growth and economic development in undeveloped countries? It would be morally unacceptable for the global north to extract wealth from the global south for 500 years, use the wealth to build highly industrialized economies, then prevent the rest of the world from catching up economically.
I am very suspicious of overpopulation arguments because it is a stalking hourse for alt-right style ethno nationalism. Rather than addressing issues it is a veiled attack on "lefties" and liberals. Blaming the entire environmental crisis on our reluctance to adopt authoritarian controls. And playing on perceived inconsistencies in how liberals see the world. Perhaps we have different laws on rape,murder, and consensual sex because they are different things! Your argument only makes sense if you completely ignore any nuance.
I think this is really about fear of immigration and uses climate change as an excuse.
FWIW, the majority of right-leaning folks (at least in the US) are vehemently against things like population controls. Go read some of the articles on Breitbart or InfoWars and this will be clear -- most of their concerns involve the government (which is pictured as an ever-left-leaning entity) overreaching in its restrictions on civil life.
The power of social conservative right wingers has been waning for a decade or so now, c.f. Trump.
We already have a fairly effective way to curb population growth: education. Highly educated people tend to have less children than people with little or no education. In fact, education gives plenty of ROI in many areas, so we can tackle this and other issues by investing in better education without explicitly having to ban anything.
That said, I think some mandatory "how to raise kids" training could do a lot of people a lot of good.