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Comment by Maursault | Hacker News Reader

> This is just simply nonsense.

Your head is full of nonsense. Something like 85% of animal and plant diversity on Earth has disappeared in the last 50 years. According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund, more than a third of Earth's natural resources have been destroyed by humans in just thirty years. And yet deforestation has increased to an alarming rate. Have you heard of Climate Change? Guess what's causing that? It is estimated that humans use 173% of the earth's resources every year. You mind explaining how that is sustainable? We're pretty much screwed, and the last thing we need is more people.

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One devil’s advocate I haven’t seen discussed: let’s say 99% of species die off via a harmful intervention. Once the harmful intervention stops, new species will naturally branch out from the survivors to fill the now-vacant environmental niches. This will result in an increase in the number of “species” back to the original level or beyond.

Assuming humans never destroy literally all multi celled organisms on Earth, I think this rediversification is guaranteed to happen after some amount of time.

Is the number of species really important at all, or is the preservation of the basic genetic drive the important thing?

There is a race between humans destroying their own capacity to destroy and humans destroying all life on Earth. I would bet on the former.

None of this is a problem. Earth can easily support 1000x more people, and that should be our goal. We are the only intelligent species in this part of the universe, and we are the only species which can protect other lifeforms and take them to other planets. We should multiply and spread life throughout the galaxy.

Biocapacity can be increased with technology and sustainable energy. Our impact on environment can be eliminated with technology and sustainable energy. These are not a problem at all; we just need to utilize more energy.

You are barking mad, son.

People have claimed humans couldn't sustain themselves for hundreds of years now, yet we have grown, and made major advancements to support more people. The air in many parts of the world is cleaner now than they were just 20 years ago, water is cleaner in many parts of the world than 30 years ago, etc. It's not like humans are stagnant. Things are actually getting better for most people on earth. Less poverty, less war, less hunger, less disease.

Less people live in poverty now than at any point in human history, but we have more people. There is more food now than at any point in human history, but we have more people. Nothing you've said has anything to do with there being "too many people." The "too many people" argument is just a hidden genocidal argument, as usually people only want -certain- people to stop reproducing (hint, it's the poor). Everything you've mentioned can be addressed through human progress, and some of the species dying can't even be attributed to humans at all. Prior to humans, 99% of all species that ever lived on earth had become extinct.

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