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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature.

The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process. How many people do you think the earth can support? 10 billion? 15 billion? At some point we're going to hit a wall. But, thanks to technology, long before we hit that wall most of the plants and animals we take for granted today will be gone.

If we want to preserve a fraction of the biodiversity we have today, at some point soon the human population of the planet will have to stop growing. People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.

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> The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process...

The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.

You not having a kid is very unlikely to be a net positive for humanity if you live in a developed country with a large, stable income.

> The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.

Exactly backwards if you look at the resource consumption and carbon footprint per capita in SF vs. that in developing countries[1]. iPhones and Ubers and Bird scooters are expensive. Not just in monetary terms but in terms of generating tons of carbon emissions during production, operation, and disposal/recycling.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

> People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.

People who don't have kids because they are worried about climate change are doing a big disservice because they are ensuring that all the folks who don't give a rusty rats ass about climate change eventually outnumber them.

Ideology and science are not like the ability to run fast. They don't require biological heritage to propagate. If I spent the money I would spend educating my kids on funding education in the developing world it would probably result in far more net increase in awareness of climate change.

Developing world's impact on climate change on per capita basis is tens and hundreds times smaller than America's. It's not them you need to educate.

And we can work towards that kind of preservation without demonizing humanity as a whole and not view ourselves as some kind of virus that must be eliminated. That's really my point. And it's a very arrogant view that ironically stems from religion, though no liberal westerner will ever admit to it. The concept of humans being separate from nature goes back to the story of Adam and Eve and is embedded in western thought. It's a good thing to be mindful of the environment, but it's not a good thing to think that all of humanity is evil and needs to be eliminated in order to save the earth.

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Carrying capacity is a thing, and it applies both at the petri dish level and at the biome/global level.

“Nature” as it existed 500M years ago has been obliterated and does not exist today. Same for nature as it existed 100M and 10M years ago. Who’s to say which era’s version of nature is correct and deserves special preservation?

Well, by your logic, killing all the people in the most overpopulated areas would be a great thing to do. That and/or sterilize them all.

/sarcasm

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