The rough transition aside, would it be so bad to return to lower population levels? The only thing I'm sad about is that I won't live to see the population decline rather than increase.
There’s no reason to think it would make things better — and many to think a massive population decline would come with a technology regression and stall of our advancement.
I think such ideas are a form of mental illness, often stemming from delusions about the world.
Right now the absolute worst thing you can do for the environment is to have a child as a westerner.
And we're not hoping for loss of life. Just a more balanced population in the long term.
We can't keep growing until every square meter of this planet is covered with people, I'm sure that's clear. Eventually resources will be constrained too much and massive wars over control of the scraps will be inevitable. Which will solve the problem of overpopulation, sure. But it'll be better to gradually reduce population growth to zero and finally reach a balance with our environment.
Nobody is speaking of a massive decline.
The problem is not running out of material or energy, but the effect of pollution.
By this logic one can rationally claim the best thing you can do for the environment is to die.
We need to be really careful that in our haste to make progress in environmental protection and gender equality, we don't find ourselves heading down the dark path towards eugenics or self-extinction.
We don't avoid killing ourselves or others because of its effects on the environment, which are great. We avoid killing ourselves and others due to other considerations. I bet you can name some so I don't have to.
I'm not sure who this "we" is. Your reasons and mine may be different, and sadly some people can't accept any of these reasons.
It's just about avoiding pregnancies that are not even wanted.
That may well be true for most people. Luckily the environment isn't the only factor in ethical considerations.
>> Right now the absolute worst thing you can do for the environment is to have a child as an African. [0]
Because today's African babies are tomorrow's European migrants, who will bolster the ranks of the polluting global elite.
But we don't want to go here do we?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
However yes in the long term we should not keep growing our world population as a whole. I do understand the need for Africans to have more kids though. For two reasons: A lot more of them die due to poor living conditions, and they serve as a "pension" for the parents.
Obviously these concerns will be solved by better living conditions.
Just out of curiosity, are you also opposed to immigration from third world countries into first world ones?
The issue is that the source of our wealth externalises the cost to the environment. The problem is really with our western society, not the people.
It's pretty likely African immigrants can teach us a thing or two about living more in harmony with nature.
Well this is definitely a line of tortured logic I’ve never heard before in order to square “babies bad, immigrants OK.” But again, who has a higher carbon footprint? An African in Africa or an African in the USA? IMO if your concern is carbon footprint, you need to be against both western births and replacement immigration.
Because we are the main polluters on this planet, not them. We produce tens of times more pollution per person than people in Africa. The buck stops with us. We have to set a more sustainable standard of living and help others to attain it too. It's very unfair that where you're born defines your standard of living.
By looking purely at immigration you're looking only at one tiny piece of the puzzle and disregarding all the others.
There's also the colossal millitary risk of being a nation with bad demographics fighting one with good ones. Which I am not willing to take.
We have to stop this thinking of it being a race where we have to keep ahead of others. We have to work together or we will never solve our environmental issues.
And the thing about a kid emitting 1 ton CO2 per year is nonsense. Just bringing your kid on one international roundtrip flight already emits that much. Not to mention choices made in their name "I have to protect my kids so I have to drive an SUV tank" that I've heard many Irish parents claim. One ton is peanuts.
The growth rate in your western country is pegged, as a matter of policy. It's met through immigration. Whether you have kids or not is neither here nor there; they will meet their target (note that carbon footprints are high in the West, and low in 3rd world countries, to the extent that marginal differences in growth in the 3rd world are irrelevant). This will subside when the global growth rate falters, which is already projected to happen. This can be accelerated by a) improving universal access to contraceptives, and b) improving 3rd world economies through trade and just regulation. In the interim we still need to improve efficiencies in the short-run to curb carbon emissions immediately. Obviously, not having kids has zero impact on this either. Innovations like renewables, seaweed-infused animal feed, etc are entering the market and will help bridge the gap, made possible through political will and investment from the financial sector in the order of trillions.
Don't have kids if you don't want them, surely. But don't pretend it makes a dent in the environmental crusade, and by extension, don't judge parents for a natural desire to start a family.
There’s no reason to think the carrying capacity is down around what we have now, and historically growing population has been the engine through which we’ve solved those problems.
Thinking that we need to “stabilize” at the current population is a delusion leading to insane policy recommendations.
Also — yes, lots of your peers in “sustainability” are talking about massive population declines.
Not to mention how most people don't have serious, productive jobs like doctors or lawyers. Most people have dead-end office jobs, ones that fuel global consumerism. Is that the technology you talk about losing? iPhones and videogames? And even so, unemployment is still an unsolvable problem.
You should drop your fairy tale expectations of living happily forever after. Mathematical models predict population growth and decline in nature. It is completely expected that when the average westerner is satiated emotionally and physically, they are not instinctively pushed to reproduce - why would they, there's nothing serious to work towards.