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> The fact of the matter is that there is only one environmental problem here on earth, and that is an overabundance of humans.

How does your argument deal with the fact as nations becomes more developed, birthrates plummet? If it were not for immigration, populations would already have started declining in the western world. And even with it included, almost all rich countries are facing an aging population.

Yet despite that, the richest countries produce far more greenhouse gases, not just per capita but often on an absolute scale, than countries with tremendously higher population and fertility. E.g., Canada produces more than 2x more CO2 than Nigeria despite being 5x less populous.

Fewer humans != more pollution. Even in rich countries, a single wealthy businessman with a private plane, or luxury cruise ship, pollutes far more than an average worker with a petrol-powered car.

I can certainly envisage a scenario where with increased automation and lack of environmental consciousness, you could somehow reduce the population of Earth tenfold, yet keep on polluting the same. Why bother with efficient engines when petrol is cheap? Would you rather have a million people each with an automated personal helicopter, a pleasure barge and a gas-guzzling SUV, or ten million people using public transport and bicycles?

That's not going into the details how you would go about reducing the human population. You even made the argument yourself, those who refuse to go along with the anti-nativity plan would eventually outbreed those who do. So unless you want to carry out global campaigns of forced mass sterilization, the best solution is still focusing on making our current technology more environmentally friendly.

Apologies, but I am not sure about what you're trying to say. Yes, pollution is not evenly distributed across countries and populations, but that does not mean that the original idea is wrong.

The truth is that overpopulation is a huge issue, but it is politically incorrect to bring this up. Given that our economy is really a Ponzi scheme, nobody wants to touch this topic. Everybody talks about declining fertility rates like a huge catastrophe, when in fact, that's some really good news.

And how do you plan on solving overpopulation? Rich countries already have birthrates below replacement threshold. Do you think that reducing them in India, Nigeria and other developing countries is the most effective and feasible way of combating CO2 emissions?

I think not. While the number of humans certainly contributes to the total amount of pollution, it is not, in my opinion, the "only environmental problem".

Apologies for being blunt, but you are heavily strawmanning. I don't think anyone said that it is "the only environmental problem" anywhere in this thread, and especially not me.

I did not say it is the only environmental problem, but I am saying it is among the big ones. It is completely illogical to say that it is not. If you agree with the fact that consumption leads to pollution, then you agree with my premise whether you like it or not, it's simply a logical conclusion.

> Do you think that reducing them in India, Nigeria and other developing countries is the most effective and feasible way of combating CO2 emissions?

Again, kind of strawmanning here. I never said it is the most efficient way to tackle it, but we need to realise that if our population keeps going up, the problem will become more and more exacerbated.

> The truth is that overpopulation is a huge issue, but it is politically incorrect to bring this up.

It's really not an issue. Negative externalities associated with the environment is a huge issue, and population decline will become a big issue in about 80 years.

> It's really not an issue.

Really? As an extreme example, are you saying that if our planet only had only 1 million people, we'd have the exact same problem? This holds for 1 billion or 3 billion instead of the almost 8 billion we're going to get to soon.

Population decline will become an issue _economically_. Environmentally, it's great.

> As an extreme example, are you saying that if our planet only had only 1 million people, we'd have the exact same problem?

Our planet could in principle support hundreds of billions as long as you're not married to the idea of preserving biodiversity.

If you separate this conversation from reality and strip any sort of relevant context, then yes, population and pollution are orthogonal concerns. What you're saying is "if human existence didn't cause externalities, then a growing population would no be an environmental problem". Preserving biodiversity is not desirable just to stroke our egos, it is actually vital for our world to continue.

If we actually talk about the real world, without unrealistic hypotheticals, and without circular arguments, then you can't possibly be right. Every extra human born pollutes and has an environmental impact. We are very far away from bringing that to zero and, unless we do, population growth is an environmental problem.

> If you separate this conversation from reality and strip any sort of relevant context, then yes, population and pollution are orthogonal concerns. What you're saying is "if human existence didn't cause externalities, then a growing population would no be an environmental problem".

Not exactly. I'm saying that problems are always caused when negative externalities are not accounted for, therefore the problem of not accounting for negative externalities is literally to account for negative externalities.

The population size is a complete red herring to this basic fact. The fact that a low population entails that we can ignore certain externalities is completely uninteresting.

> Every extra human born pollutes and has an environmental impact. We are very far away from bringing that to zero and, unless we do, population growth is an environmental problem.

It will never be zero. So what? Population growth for affluent nations is already negative. Growth rate falls as a nation enjoys better health care and more opportunities, which is why global population will start falling in about 80 years. Population growth clearly has a form of autoregulation.

What's not autoregulating are negative externalities of common goods, by definition. That's why population growth is not a problem and negative externalities are.

Sustainability is not just about CO2 emissions. Countries that have low per-capita greenhouse emission or pollution have their own ecological problems caused by e.g. deforestation, depletion of fishing grounds, depletion of water sources, extinction of species that are vital for food production, air/land/water pollution by garbage, toxic waste, plastics. Ever went to a less-developed south-asian country? Low per-capita CO2 emissions, but I wouldn't say a hallmark of sustainability, especially not in the densely populated areas.

I would say reducing per-capita CO2 emissions is probably one of the easier problems to solve, especially considering the already huge differences between developed countries. But that alone is not going to save the planet, not by a long shot.

That point was raised earlier in a different branch of the discussion. My response is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403067

> How does your argument deal with the fact as nations becomes more developed, birthrates plummet?

There was an HN article recently that this (unfortunately) may be relatively short lived. Birthrates plummet particularly as women have better education and better access to contraception. However, as birthrates plummet, that also means there is new selective pressure that favors the genetics of people who want to have large families or are in some other way averse to birth control. That selective pressure didn't exist until the past 50 years or so.

The premise of your brain evolution argument is flawed because you’re assuming nature absolutely wins over nurture in psychological development, which is what I assume you mean by “brain” here. I doubt there’s a particular physical brain configuration that gives rise to pro-life thoughts, although neither of us have proof.

> you’re assuming nature absolutely wins over nurture in psychological development

No, I'm not. I'm only assuming that in matters of instinctive revulsion, nature puts her thumb heavily on the scales.

It's not as simple as having a "anti-abortion gene" or not, but there are some really interesting studies about this:

> A 2005 twin study examined the attitudes regarding 28 different political issues such as capitalism, unions, X-rated movies, abortion, school prayer, divorce, property taxes, and the draft. [...] Genetic factors accounted for 53% of the variance of an overall score.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat... - linking to Wikipedia because it has some links)

> But saying that is taboo

Still depends in which circles, but I have an impression it's getting better. Might be the bubble effect though, unsure, but before a couple of years I didn't hear it as much and there definitely weren't small local organizations dedicated to saying it and pushing it on the political agenda. On the other hand, it might be a problem which solves itself (higher lifestyle, less children) but I'm not to sure when or if that is really going to happen.

> it might be a problem which solves itself

Yes, that's possible. Economic prosperity does reduce birth rates, and that gives me hope. But it's a race between that and the carbon emissions that will happen on our current trajectory towards that prosperity. Right now it looks to me like the carbon is going to win.

I don't know if carbon will win or not. Right now, carbon is in a race with renewable energy sources (wind, solar, + storage), and their costs are plummeting while fossil gets more and more expensive. We're already at the tipping point where it's cheaper to build out wind/solar than to build fossil power plants, and it's much cheaper to fuel a car with electricity than gasoline over its lifetime.

The population thing is already on a trajectory toward leveling. The main cause of population growth now isn't birth rate, but rather increased lifespans of those born two or three generations ago. If we convert to a renewable energy base before population levels off, we win.

Various governments are still heavily subsidizing fossil fuels, and so it's an unfair game. How can renewables win in this scenario...

Lobbying and voting for pro-renewable politicians (or at least those that are neutral).

They won't keep doing it. The advantages of renewables are too strong.

The thing about politicians that can be bought, is that someone else can buy them, too. If they're not ideologically committed to the cause, if it's just political, then they'll turn on the cause in the name of either ideological goals or simple practicality.

There's a hard limit to how much harm a politician is willing to do to their own country in order to placate special interests with nothing to offer but money.

I agree with you. In re: Fermi's paradox, I have a speculation:

All exponential growth curves in the real world are S-shaped, they always level-off. An intelligent species can choose when and how this leveling-off occurs for themselves, but not whether. I think that since we have not yet made this choice, we are not yet considered intelligent by the citizens of the galaxy, and so the Fermi Paradox: we are in quarantine.

- - - -

Unrelated, there is a school of applied ecology called Permaculture. Toby Hemenway (RIP) has a talk he gave about how we might transition to a steady-state civilization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b7zJ-hx_c I haven't watched this one yet, but it's 'the sequel to Toby's popular talk, "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and The Planet, but not Civilization."', which I have watched and found very inspiring.

> The fact of the matter is that there is only one environmental problem here on earth, and that is an overabundance of humans. But saying that is taboo, even here on HN.

Because it is wrong, or rather: Only correct if you say humans cannot change. The core problem is resource usage. Now, fewer people use fewer resources. So far, you are correct. But what also uses fewer resources is a different lifestyle. People in the west, and especially in the USA, use far more resources in their life than people living in other parts of the world. So, we only have an "overabundance of humans" if we don't change that. And that is more a matter of society than evolution.

> The core problem is resource usage

No, it isn't. The core problem is exponential growth. The population today is double what it was just 50 years ago, so you could cut resource usage in half and all that would accomplish is taking us back to the problem as it stood in 1970 or so.

It's true that this is a social issue, but even there the problem is very difficult. The entire world economy is built on the premise of eternal exponential growth in something with economic value. That is fundamentally unsustainable. At some point we will have to transition to at leasy polynomial growth, if not an actual steady-state solution. No one is even talking about that AFAICT.

Just to emphasize what lisper is saying, the core problem is exponential growth, even if we invent FTL spaceships, even if we invent warp drive, the core problem is still exponential growth.

We could turn the Galaxy green† and still not have enough room. We could fill it with Ringworlds, with Dyson Spheres, and still not have enough room.

The core problem is exponential growth.

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Coloni...

Upvoted and agree with most of what you wrote.

But nitpicking:

> It optimizes for solutions that reproduce well (relative to competitors) in the short term.

That's only true up to a point. Natural selection works on ecosystems too, and ecosystems that are highly unstable and prone to self-destruct (which we might expect is highly correlated with short-term optimization) will eventually be selected out. So, sustainability is literally the only thing that can win in the end, if it can survive the instability of short-term optimizations.

Appreciate the upvote, but...

> Natural selection works on ecosystems too

No, it doesn't. Ecosystems don't reproduce. Natural selection works on genes (and memes). See Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene."

Ecosystems do reproduce, both internally and externally. Internally they are a system which is made of many interlocking webs of reproducing organisms, and externally they naturally grow and spread. They don't reproduce through distinct generations but they are constantly rejuvenating themselves. They spread and "copy" themselves into new niches by their constituent organisms doing so. With that context my comment probably makes more sense.

Nope. But some references might help.

Here's a good start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692970/

One of the key points:

(iii) ecosystem diversity and productivity increases over macroevolutionary time as a whole, and after each major extinction event.

That implies that major extinction events do in fact affect ecosystems profoundly, and the ones that emerge successfully have more productivity and diversity.

That reference does not support your claim that "ecosystems reproduce" at all. In fact, the paper says the exact opposite: organisms reproduce. Ecosystems do not.

Not even your cherry-picked quote supports your claim. "Ecosystem diversity and productivity increases" is not even remotely the same thing as "ecosystems reproduce."

The nature and tone of your replies really doesn't make this all that productive. I could go on to explain, but three nopes in a row is my limit.

Even with a population as low as a few million, humans could rapidly destroy the climate. Or 10B humans could live sustainably for a long time. The pain involved in the latter is fairly small.

> 10B humans could live sustainably for a long time. The pain involved in the latter is fairly small.

That is far from clear. But whether or not this particular data point is defensible, it misses the larger point. (And you are not alone in this. This missing-of-the-point is my point.)

There are really two separate problems here, a short-term one and a long-term one. And by "short term" I mean like the next 100 years or so.

The short term problem is that our rate of carbon emissions control the third or fourth derivative of the economic impacts of climate change. We could drop our carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and still not avoid many of the negative impacts of climate change because we're still at >400PPM and will be for a very long time no matter what we do in the coming years.

The long term problem is that our entire global economic system is predicated on the assumption of eternal exponential growth in something, and that is not sustainable in the long run under any circumstances. At some point we're going to have to transition to at least polynomial growth, more likely an actual steady-state. AFAICT no one is even thinking about that.

When you say "the pain involved in the latter is fairly small" are you speaking from personal experience?

The solution is probably to have the state or child-raising corporations pay people to have children instead of the current model where 1-2 parents raise a child.

Not having children at all and intentionally extinguishing humans is also a possibly optimal, albeit more radical, solution.

Since the demographic transition started (first in France, after the French revolution) humans have been selected for resistance to anti-natalist ideas. Literally only people with some resistance to them perpetuate their genes!

Empirical proof can be seen in the ever-increasing proportion of large families.

Natural selection is hard at work picking the exact opposite of what anti-natalists want.

Yes, obviously, hence the idea to make childbirth something that is done because the person is paid by the state or a corporation, so that the genes that are spread are not related to the willingness to raise a child.

Fortunately, mammal populations are cyclical

Humans are not separate from the environment, we are the environment. It doesn't matter if a super volcano erupts and changes climate, or if humans do it through resource consumption. As far as the universe is concerned, it's all just the system reacting with itself over time.

"Problem" is a human concept. Your logic is circular. To solve the problem we must eliminate humans yet with no humans there is no one to define the state of the system as a "problem".

You're attributing human like judgement to an ecosystem that would theoretically exist post-humans.

If you're saying that some humans deserve to exist yet others do not, then yeah I think people will rightfully react negatively against that.