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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But at what cost to the diversity of biological systems?

It’s not popular to say but we need to stabilize population growth and stop encroaching on natural habitats and put a brake on consumerism.

The developed world has in many parts allowed previously used areas to revert to a natural state. However in high pop growth countries the opposite is happening as both thd developed world and developing world both need as well as demand more resource extraction. We're depleting ocean fisheries, contributing to soil erosion, having water shortages, etc.

Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever, but we need to do the same as we’re doing for pollution set a benchmark and aim for it. Get those people educated, provide them with prophylactics and get them out of a pop explosion curve and get to ZPG like Italy and Japan (US as well if we didn’t import pop growth).

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>People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But at what cost to the diversity of biological systems? > >It’s not popular to say but we need to stabilize population growth and stop encroaching on natural habitats and put a brake on consumerism.

This is not popular because it assumes that everyone has an excessive footprint. I'm vegetarian, I get most of my food from a local, organic farm. My footprint is minimal (no car, zero commute, no flight, etc). We could be billions more if we chose to live this way. Why ask/force people not to have a family where we could have happy family living responsibly? Asking others to die / not reproduce is a great way not to challenge our way of life.

For some reasons, all the people I know who campaign for population stabilization/reduction are among those with the worst footprint.

I too have no car, zero commute, maybe take one flight every other year etc. I still think we should stabilize human population. I don't know what is the maximum number of humans mother earth can support without completely fucking up the planet, but I don't want to find out. Do you?

I don't have kids and don't plan to have. Nobody is forcing me not to have kids, in fact the opposite. I am the black sheep of my family and social circle, people look at me weird for not having kids (not that I care).

The problem with asking people to live responsibly is that it hasn't worked so far. Ever tried asking a meat eater to reduce a tiny bit of their meat consumption? Another issue is that even if it worked, it will take a long time for people to change their habits. We should of course educate people about responsible living, but we should also remember that it is a long, hard process.

I don't know what the solution is, but we are at a point that we should try everything we can think of, including asking people to have less kids, live responsibly etc etc

I grew up eating meat twice a day and quite like the taste. I cut that to once a week (and ramping down) once I understood the co2 numbers. I have always been carless but was naive with regard to diet. Dairy is now the WIP.

Turns out I also quite like tofu, falafels and soy crumble.

This is basically the problem. To constrain human growth so it is sustainable requires a lot of limitations.

Environmentalism is unfortunately a liberal issue, not a conservative one (or an all-people one which is fundamentally is), population controls is basically a war on the poor, especially in the modern world, and that policy can't coexist in the liberal sphere right now.

Environmentalism historically is basically conflict with corporations, and was really about localized environmentalism (pollution of a lake, etc), or it was a small number of corporations (CFCs for ozone).

Global warming and species destruction is a totally different ballgame politically.

Constraining human growth seems to be very easy, though, and requires /more freedom/ not less: Increase access to education, reproductive freedom, and career opportunities.

This trifecta has brought reproduction below the replacement rate in large parts of the globe. US population goes up only via immigration.

But that's already factored into projected population growth. We still end up with a 1-2+ billion more people for the next century or so before the replacement rate is negative.

So... Do it more. Places with good access to education and family planning /already have/ negative population growth rates. The problem is uneven access, and that's something that can be worked on.

Open borders to move people more quickly into more-developed countries, and increase funding and pressure for initiatives to raise standards in other countries.

I don't see that working. Right wing has been on the rise the past few years and countries like Japan didn't have a decent immigration system to begin with. Racism was a big factor in Brexit vote too. It just seems that with every passing year, immigration (even for well educated and qualified people) is becoming more and more difficult (even before covid), the opposite of what we need.

Here's the rub, all the things you're asking for cost way more energy and produce way more carbon than being third-world poor.

Environmentalism as currently practiced is a liberal issue, but protecting the environment is a deeply conservative notion - the mechanisms by which it is achieved may differ, though.

Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative to her core, raised environmental issues on the world stage and worked for action well before it was a politically fashionable cause.

British Conservatism != American Conservatism.

Not even close.

> Environmentalism is unfortunately a liberal issue

Only the "performative" kind. Conservatives are quite in favor of nuclear power for example, which is arguably the most "environmental" thing one can be in favor of. What they are against are reductions in business caused by higher energy prices, and worse quality of life. Both are a hard sell in the long term unless you're just virtue signaling and lower QOL and higher cost of living won't affect you (that is if you're Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, or John Kerry for example).

> Why ask/force people not to have a family where we could have happy family living responsibly?

I'm sorry, but you know that people can still have families (up to 2.1 children/woman on average) while staying below the replacement reproduction rate (so resulting in population reduction). So why pretend that they're being asked to give up families entirely?

You'll have to explain that to those who want 3+ children. I know a few that will fight for their rights to have as many children as they desire.

I personnally believe population control is just a way not to challenge our way of life. Because if you get them to actually care about the environment (our future), then people will ajust their family's dream (why have another child if it makes life worst for the first one?).

Your initial claim was that people would be asked to have no family. At least acknowledge that the choice is "large family" vs. "medium/small family", and not "family" vs. "no family", instead of blithely shifting the argument.

> We could be billions more if we chose to live this way.

Can you explain this? Why should we be billions more?

Don't distort their words. They said could and should.

The quote was literally a copy & paste from the parent post. No distortion there. I am genuinely curious why people think we should aim to grow even more in numbers.

More so, I am genuinely curious what the same people propose we do when we reach whatever they consider to be the maximum sustainable population. Clearly, we can't grow infinitely in a limited space.

If we stick around long enough, then colonizing and terraforming the solar system where possible would provide most of the growth. Luna, Mars, Venus, the Belt, and some moons around the gas giants would be candidates. Eventually, we might figure out ways to expand to other nearby star systems with good enough tech to support it.

We can't get people to survive in a closed environment on Earth, or even get scientists to create a liveable ecosystem in a lab... With all the resources available at hands. I'm not actively against Mars colonization only because I trust it will fail and give us a good reason to care about the unique and fragile habitat we have here on Earth.

I'm not hoping for a failure, I'm just intimately convinced that we won't manage to survive on other rocks without really trying here first.

I'm talking long term, if human civilization lasts for thousands of more years. Then it becomes more reasonable. I agree that this century it's a much harder sell and largely out of reach. We should focus most of our efforts on Earth for now, without abandoning some space exploration. Space programs, telescopes and SETI are good things we should continue doing.

I didn't say we should be billions more. I said we could if we cared about our environment. I simply believe it's more effective to explain the danger we face and get people to really care, than to curb population growth.

The first reason is that it takes more energy to fight the desire to reproduce than to get people to live responsibly (at least not more than our environment can bear). Moreover, if you somehow get people to reproduce less than they desire (without causing to much frustration), you'll still have to educate them about the sustainability issues (aka our way of life). Why not directly address the way of life challenge, then?

People don't want many children when they know what's coming (your first child's future is in jeopardy, let's have more!). It's no coincidence that those who have/want the most children are the least aware of the biodiversity/climate problem.

isn’t the extremely long term plan to colonize the universe? how can we achieve this goal without major increases in population?

I said could.

> We could be billions more if we chose to live this way.

This line of reasoning is problematic as it just delays the stabilization. Maybe we could have a few billion more people now but surely there must be a limit somewhere. 10B, 50, 100? Sooner or later we'll have to stabilize.

> For some reasons, all the people I know who campaign for population stabilization/reduction are among those with the worst footprint.

To be clear, I personally believe we have to both stabilize the population AND dramatically reduce footprint per capita.

>This line of reasoning is problematic as it just delays the stabilization. Maybe we could have a few billion more people now but surely there must be a limit somewhere. 10B, 50, 100? Sooner or later we'll have to stabilize.

The thing is, people will only reproduce less if they adhere to the cause. So if we get people to realize we all must care for our environment in order to live well, then you don't have to limit population growth. Limiting population growth will always be less effective than changing a way of life (which makes people not want too many children).

If you restrict reproduction, expect people to want more consumption (at least to compensate).

> no car, zero commute, no flight, etc

If you get a heart attack, where do you think the medical supplies come from?

By air from China!

Even if you personally manage to abstain from taking planes, you consume products and services by people who fly and drive cars.

Obviously. But it's already taken into account in my carbon footprint (by multiple estimates including "imported" emissions).

> Why ask/force people not to have a family where we could have happy family living responsibly?

You can't guarantee the lifestyles of your children. For all you know, your family of 6 kids will rebel against your (extremely worthy and admirable) lifestyle and start flying around to see the world. That's what kids often do.

>You can't guarantee the lifestyles of your children.

I bet I can have more influence on my childrens being environmentalist, than on others' people desire to reproduce.

By the way, I'm not advocating for people to have more children but against policy to limit population. Only because it so less effective than accepting to have a sustainable footprint.

Being vegetation obviously has a huge impact on your footprint, but I'd imagine that buying from a local organic farm actually has a much higher footprint than buying from a larger non-organic farm, since non-organic can grow more in a smaller space.

> People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people.

Whether global population ever reaches 10 billion people is in doubt. Fertility rates are falling faster than the most aggressive UN estimates in all but a few places. [1][2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/global-population-s...

[2] Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson

Isn't global population already projected to stabilize in 100 years? The only way you could accelerate this is through aggressive policy measures to allow universal access to contraceptives, and investments to hasten development of manufacturing or other (which, in the interim, will raise emissions - but it would be unethical to disallow it) in the 3rd world. I'm for it but I don't expect it. The alternative is what China opted for which is likely not possible in developing countries.

There's a class conflict in the backdrop and I see this as the reason media is planting the idea that consumers ought to be content with less, not because of the environment. They still want and expect you to consume, but will spin lower quality of life (owing to unaffordability of housing and certain lifestyles) as a virtue. Realistically your carbon footprint +/- on an individual level stays in the same rough ballpark if you live in the West since a lot of it is due to city infrastructure, electricity, gas. It's just compounded by sheer population. In my view everyone ought be able to live and pursue a life of high quality; reducing quality of life is not the solution, it's a problem. The solution will lie in innovation, population stagnation, growing economy for developing nations, etc.

Obviously we don't want to go the route China went (even without their bad policy, most people there we having fewer children). But as you say contraceptive availability and education coupled with opportunities.

I mean "Stop at two" isn't a particularly awful policy, yet that is sufficient to curtail population growth.

I doubt it even needs to be a policy in many countries - I don't know many people with more than two kids.

Agreed. Two even three. The issue is when most people go over that. It's not usually because they want to but because they don't have the means or options to control their family's growth.

Population will stabilized. But the question is how it will be stabilized. We could do it in a controlled way or through environmental collapse, war, pandemic...

The projection is owing to improved quality of life through global trade. Since the 20th Century the rate of extreme poverty has been decimated and continues to drop.

In 1st world countries the fertility rates are already stagnant. The growth rate is targeted and achieved through immigration, from countries with lower quality of life and higher child mortality.

Consuming less can be associated with better quality of life.

More walkable neighborhoods mean you need cars for less errands, which means less money spent on road infrastructure and more money being invested in more efficient solutions.

It's understood that opting to live in high-density areas means smaller living space in general. The urban/rural price disparity today is massive however and many could scarcely afford a room the size of a closet, but notwithstanding, whether this provides a "better quality" depends on what a person values. If you value what a detached home brings, that's what increases your quality of life. Having the choice matters.

Having choice matters if the option wasn't only single family homes where you live. There are no middle housing options for the vast majority of the country or options to expand your existing property into duplexes.

You're digressing into a zoning problem.

seconded, most "modern" cities evolved blindly but there's almost nothing required in dense urban areas in terms of mobility. biking, walking can do a lot. thinking people pay expensive cars and gym club to forget about their bills is such a sad joke.

With actual land use planning, the tension between production and conservation is a false dichotomy.

Second, agricultural products are already produced to meet needs

Third, the "reduce people" argument is almost always a losing one

It's not a false dichotomy, there's just some slack in the current system. Eventually, no matter how hard you try, you hit a point where population and conservation are incompatible. We just don't know what that point is.

We could handle 10 billion if we consumed as people consumed in 1901, but not at the rate middle class people consume in even middle of the road developed countries.

Japan, Italy and the US are "reducing the people" naturally. We're there already. Yes our pop happens to be "growing" but that's due to others exporting their excess to us.

> We could handle 10 billion if we consumed as people consumed in 1901, but not at the rate middle class people consume in even middle of the road developed countries.

How do you figure? Certainly we can't afford to keep emitting at the rate we're emitting, but if we transition to entirely clean energy and use our existing farmland more efficiently (rather than encroaching on important ecosystems) then I'm not sure what the remaining bottlenecks are. Lumber?

Yes, We will probably figure out fusion and AGI within a century along with advanced molecular nanotech. So yes, if civilization can make it through the 21st, we should be able to transition to a highly efficient, clean civilization, while restoring part of the biosphere.

It doesn't matter what the US/Japan/Europe are doing population wise.

The big issue with the future is that China and India was to be first world countries with first world luxuries.

India is currently 1.3 billion people and still growing 1-2% per year.

China is currently 1.4 billion people. Still growing .3% per year (US is .4%)

Dismissing first world population growth as "just being overflow" / immigration ignores the fact that people that immigrate to the US will quickly start consuming resources like an American.

Population growth doesn't matter that much. What really matters is the resource consumption rates of the population.

The environmental future is basically a conflict between India and China aspiring to Western resource consumption rates and luxury, and us praying they figure out how to do it sustainably.

Otherwise: WAR.

> It’s not popular to say but we need to stabilize population growth

Is it not? Where, and why?

> provide them with prophylactics

Kinda problematic for orgs that rely on US foreign aid.[1]

"The policy originally enacted from 1984 to 1993 spoke to abortion only, not family planning in general. However, in 2001, the policy was re-implemented and expanded to cover all voluntary family planning activities, and critics began to refer to it as the "global gag rule." These critics argue that the policy not only reduces the overall funding provided to particular NGOs, it closes off their access to USAID-supplied condoms and other forms of contraception. This, they argue, negatively impacts the ability of these NGOs to distribute birth control, leading to a downturn in contraceptive use and from there to an increase in the rates of unintended pregnancies and abortion. A study of nations in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that unintended pregnancies increased and abortions approximately doubled while the policy was in effect. Critics also argue that the ban promotes restrictions on free speech as well as restrictions on accurate medical information. The European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development presented a petition to the United States Congress signed by 233 members condemning the policy. The forum has stated that the policy "undermines internationally agreed consensus and goals"."

The global gag rule is enforced by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones. Infer from that what you will.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy

All well and good, but thecountries of Africa are 't the problem. They're not the ones consuming resources disproportionately to their populations.

Is population an issue? Yes, probably. But it's (Western) (over) consumption that got us here, and continues to escalate the crisis.

The less distractions for that, the better.

I'm not disputing anything you're saying. My response, a rebuttal to "we need to focus on population reduction", was about 2 things:

1. Countries with high population growth numbers do, in fact, focus on bringing those numbers down. China and India have had widespread family planning programs for decades and those have borne fruit.

2. The country with the highest per-capita consumption in the world conditions a lot of its foreign aid on recipients not promoting family planning. Meanwhile, Internet commenters from that country grumble about poor countries' population numbers.

>> Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever,

What exactly does this mean? People were pretty upset with China's one child policy (all the unintended side-effects ignored); this sounds even more nefarious? .

It’s not something we achieve in 20 years. It would be a century long goal via reduced fertility rates that do not include barbaric tools like forced abortions, etc.

Yeah, if it takes a century then it will be way too late for biodiversity. The man-made great extinction is right now.

It’s not like we want to be authoritarians and control reproduction directly.

We can only incentivize via education, opportunity and availability of contraceptives.

India for example offers sterilization for men who want to avoid unintended impregnation of partners. They could even incentivize such a thing.

How can you prevent any incentives becoming economic eugenics?

I agree, but then it shouldn't be brought up as something relevant to preventing catastrophic climate change.

How do we reduce fertility rates?

The enemy you are fighting is natural selection, in this case.

Give people (especially women) access to both education and reproductive freedom. It works wonders.

There seem to be memetic inoculations (i.e. core beliefs that reproduction at a high rate is desirable) in some groups that prevent those wonders from being worked. You eventually reach a point where all children are born to the uneducated or memetically inoculated, so again natural selection is a problem.

The population is going to stabilize somewhere between 9 and 11 billion by around the end of the century, and then start slowly declining. But getting back to 1960s level of population isn't realistic. Maybe several centuries from now. But at that point, we could reasonably expect advanced nanotech, advanced efficient automation, arcologies and fusion to offer sustainably high standards of living for 10+ billion people.

It's really more of a matter of how we make it through the next 100 years.

>Stabilize populations to 1960s or whatever, but we need to do the same as we’re doing for pollution set a benchmark and aim for it. Get those people educated, provide them with prophylactics and get them out of a pop explosion curve and get to ZPG like Italy and Japan (US as well if we didn’t import pop growth).

So about 3 billion people is stable? You're saying we need a reduction of about 5 billion? How do we do that? Which countries need massive depopulation?

I dunno, how did we establish which countries have to reduce greenhouse emissions the most?

When it comes to population regulation it's via reproduction policies that educate women and offer them job opportunities and incentivize them to have sustainable family sizes.

>I dunno, how did we establish which countries have to reduce greenhouse emissions the most?

You will be frightened how we did that. Canada for example is net-positive and effectively doesn't have to do anything. Not surprising given we have a gigantic boreal forest that stretches across the country. We have almost 10,000 trees per person. So then why do we show up in top 10 worst countries? Our trees don't count, they are considered against us.

>When it comes to population regulation it's via reproduction policies that educate women and offer them job opportunities and incentivize them to have sustainable family sizes.

Well, the 'climate clock' has only 8 years left before DEADline. Education and reproductive policies like only allowing 1 child won't work. We have to obviously do far more to reduce the world population by more than half. What do you think we should do?

> Well, the 'climate clock' has only 8 years left before DEADline.

What DEADline? You mean to keep warming below 1.5°C? Do you suppose if we go ver by .1°, we all die? That's not how it works. It's better to limit warming, but there's no magic cutoff in which we all die. It's on a continuum, with more warming meaning the increase in the likelihood of extreme events and disruption. Also at some point, increase in the possibility of positive feedback, but that's likely above or near the maximum projected warming range 2.7°-4°C, and it's still a matter of degree.

The IPCC report does not say we all die in the current projected warming range, or that civilization collapses.

>What DEADline? You mean to keep warming below 1.5°C? Do you suppose if we go ver by .1°, we all die?

I will admit, I looked through the site to find if they are doomsaying like AOC.

>It's better to limit warming, but there's no magic cutoff in which we all die.

In the last 20,000 years or so the world warmed up 6 celcius without human input. This has been a great thing for our species, basically enabling us to create civilization. Another 1.5c will be good for us. It will unlock tons of landmass.

>It's on a continuum, with more warming meaning the increase in the likelihood of extreme events and disruption.

The hypothesis that say atlantic hurricanes are worse because of climate change does not match the data. It's a good guess because more energy can theoretically be put into the hurricane but that's kind of debunked now. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/could-clima... Little bit of a backpedal. Sure, rising seas might cause some problems for rich folks who built too close to the coast. I have no pity for them.

>Also at some point, increase in the possibility of positive feedback, but that's likely above or near the maximum projected warming range 2.7°-4°C, and it's still a matter of degree.

Also great news. There are a number of projections 1.9, 2.6, 3.4, 4.5, 6,7,and 8.5.

All the predictions of doom is as if we are following the 8.5 path.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

Note how this biased graph only shows IPCC 8.5. Here's a copy and paste. RCP8.5, generally taken as the basis for worst-case climate change scenarios, was based on what proved to be overestimation of projected coal outputs.

8.5 is not happening. It's looking like all the efforts humanity is making is placing us somewhere around 3. Afterall, above 4.5 is that we basically do nothing. CO2 peaks in around 2045 and life goes on.

Even more interestingly, the climate clock is RCP 1.9. The only way we achieve the climate clock goal is that all fossil fuels end worldwide in the next ~7 years. That's not going to happen.

> People keep saying we can feed 10 billion people. We can. But at what cost to the diversity of biological systems?

Also those 10 billion people in the future will be consuming far more per capita as developing nations continue to industrialise.

This is a good thing as everyone deserves a decent life. But if we are all going to have a decent life without destroying the planet then we need to be mindful of how many of us we can sustainably support.

Resource expenditure per unit of consumption is on a multi-decade long downtrend.

Look at this: https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields

The yields/unit area go up and to the right, which means two things. One is that we need less land for agriculture, which frees it up for other purposes, including allowing biodiversity/forestland.

In my native state of Indiana, cornfields are being converted into subdivisions and parking lots for Lowe's and Walmart. Progress!

I wish sprawl was addressed in the US. New housing is definitely needed but it seems like the cheapest way to do it is always expanding ever outward in car-dependent suburbs. We need to price externalities of car use yesterday.

Downtown housing stock tends to be old in most cities. It's prohibitively expensive to buy a building, tear it down, rebuild something bigger and hope that it's worth enough to pay for the above.

It's cheaper to buy unused land and build on it. Well, cheaper to the homeowner anyways. The costs of maintaining ambulance/fire/police/sewage/electricity infrastructure are huge, but born by the whole city usually.

If you want to stop sprawl, have city/state taxes be based on the cost to provide service to your address. Taxes in the cities will likely go down (there's probably a customer per few feet of sewage pipe), and taxes in the suburbs will be astronomical (where there's probably a hundred feet of piping per customer).

The amount of resources allocated per-consumer in the suburbs is bad, and in rural areas is crazy. I'm in the suburbs and there's probably 50 feet of clearance between houses on all sides. That's 100 feet of piping to connect our houses, 100 feet of electrical wiring, etc.

And yet I pay the same taxes as I did when I lived downtown in an apartment complex, where each resident probably had 1/2" of city-owned piping connected to it.

With vertical farming, we can feed any number of people with less and less inputs. It's a solved problem, if we just scale up this technology everywhere.

"It’s also indoors, can be placed anywhere on the planet, is heavily integrated with robots and AI, and produces better fruits and vegetables while using 95% less water and 99% less land."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/11/20/this-2-...

I recently came across this pretty awesome system for vertical hydroponics. It's designed to be self-contained, with minimal labor and power requirements (systems can be run off-grid.) It's a bit capital intensive, and you have to get your nutrients from somewhere, of course, but it seems really promising.

https://ezgrogarden.com/

> Johnson says the system will grow 700 plants, using 15 towers, in a space of just 2 by 18 feet. Today, he sells kits ranging from single tower patio gardens to 10-tower deck gardens to commercial-sized set-ups like those being used by a Miami football stadium for concession meals, by a Whole Foods Market in New Jersey, and by rooftop farmers in Lagos, Nigeria. ... This closed-loop system uses less than 10% of the water of a traditional garden. ... To create a system robust enough for even off-grid farmers, Johnson has spent the last 2 decades developing his trihelix solar windmill.

"Mad scientist's homestead is parking size, off-grid system" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSnHShly5R0

Ok but first you have to show us your fusion reactors.

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