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Comment by tonyedgecombe | Hacker News Reader

So what is your solution to overpopulation?

Personally, I think the overpopulation argument is weak. The places that have overpopulation issues are the places where people don't listen to people talking about overpopulation. It's the same problem with plastic use, non-green electricity generation, etc. Most policies are just going to negatively impact the minority without actually solving anything.

I firmly believe that necessity is the mother of innovation, so we should be encouraging those who feel a need to cut back to reproduce, because those are the people who will innovate for the rest of the world. If you have the means to make positive changes, you have the means to raise children to continue that effort. If food starts to become scarce (globally, not just regional distribution issues), we'll innovate new ways to produce food. If water starts to become scarce generally, we'll innovate ways to conserve it and/or desalinate. If pollution gets out of hand, we'll innovate solutions there too.

So I think all of the talk about overpopulation is counterproductive. We should be discussing the problems overpopulation causes and solve those since there's no way to force another individual or group to stop reproducing, but you can make living more sustainably more cost effective.

I dunno, either we lurch from crisis to crisis and possibly end up with an ungovernable world, or look at implementing something like a one child policy in countries with very high population growth (or pressuring them to do so by preventing them from exporting population).

Certainly move the discourse beyond ... so well population is going up, nothing can be done about it.

Fertility has already fallen below replacement levels in most of the world. The only exception is Africa however carbon emissions from that part of the world are so small it barely makes a difference. Even if you wanted to focus in on Africa you will find the countries with the highest emissions like South Africa have a fertility rate barely above replacement level.

The reality is nearly all the increases in population are built in already, it's caused by people surviving into old age. The population is going up and nothing can be done about it.

This is why arguments about population are pointless with regards to climate change, we resolved that years ago through education and better health provision.

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