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Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

Population growth is slowing, and population is predicted to flatten out. So yay!

That falls very short of what should be done to limit our impact on the planet for the sake of protecting the environment and remaining wilderness.

I really don't understand this disconnect between the message of urgency about the environment and the climate, and the widespread complacency about an actual root cause of the issue (as illustrated by your comment), which is population growth: "Oh it's slowing and will probably stabilise at 11 billions... that's fine. On the other hand, we must be emissions-neutral and stop using plastics by tomorrow." That's totally incoherent.

Most of the world is empty: https://geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/world-...

We just need to learn to be efficient.

If I look at the density map you posted: Oh look at the Amazon, it's all empty so we still have space to expand farming. Yay.

The world is not empty. It's either exploited to cater for human needs or wilderness that should be protected at the point we've reached.

Perhaps you missed the empty desserts the other commenter has pointed out. If we want to colonize Mars, we should be able to colonize desserts.

To illustrate the same point differently: if the USA had the same population density as the UK, there would be 2.5 billion people living there, instead of the current 327 million.

Math: 327 million US ppl * 274 UK ppl per sq km / 35 US ppl per sq km.

Most of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert. Sahara, Australian Outback, Namib, the Arctic, North American West, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Antarctica, Patagonia.

Granted, a few pockets of wild forests left, Amazon, parts of Central Africa, New Guinea, Siberia. Under intense development pressure. Hard to call that "most of the world".

> Most of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert.

Southern California is an inhospitable desert, but tens of millions of people live there nonetheless.

There certainly are ways to live there. Granted, it needs some colonization effort - still easier than colonizing Mars, and actually producing some technologies for that.

The past 200 years is the era of energy-intensive technological innovation. What is the evidence that the technology innovation pattern we've experienced so far can shift into ultra-low energy mode at scale? In inhospitable environments to boot.

PS. Mars colonization is folly.

The need to find new places to live, perhaps combined with regulatory effort.

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