The Problem with Consensus (2015)
scienceunicorn.blogspot.com
scienceunicorn.blogspot.com
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-01/the-limits-to-...
But yeah, sure he's making a slightly more complicated argument, but it's still making an implicit assumption that the upsides of population growth will scale indefinitely, and I just don't buy it. It's at best an open question. But on a fundamental level, there has to be some limit. That's simply due to physics.
Then he goes on a rant about malthus and the subsequent explosion in population without mentioning the very important fact that it would've been impossible without the invention of synthetic fertiliser. Instead he says Malthus missed the fairly obvious fact that livestock and plant populations would increase with human populations. But again, this is imprecise at best.
A simplistic counter argument might suggest that given enough technological advancement, humanity would expand beyond the finite limits of the Earth. However, it is also probable that technologies which are inconceivable to us today will become available in the future. How this will change our understanding of the Earth's perceived "ecological limits" is unknown.
As we project out into the future, we are dealing with things which are known to be unknown-unknowns.
The more damning indictment of the Club of Rome's agenda and philosophy is the dark history of Eugenics. Paul Ehrlich wrote in favor of forced sterilization:
>The Ehrlichs float the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods. However, they reject the idea as unpractical due to "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#:~:text=Th...
A better question which illustrates the underlying philosophical issues might ask: What is the greatest good? An unspoiled vision of nature as idealized by contemporary elites? Or productivity gains which ease the human condition and lift the masses out of poverty?
From my perspective this is the underlying issue with the environmental movement as conceived by the Club of Rome, the World Economic forum and other globalist organizations.
Vocal environmentalists have, for decades, been focusing on abstract concepts of harm to the detriment of the very real problems caused by scare energy and high population. The pro-nuclear movement and the rise of family planning have done far more to control the risks than anything to do with beating people over the head with statistics. The fossil fuel industry would be an afterthought if people had responded to Chernobyl rationally instead of emotionally. Even the environmentalists have had more success by inspiring people to work on improving the cost efficiency of renewable energy than trying to convince people of their beliefs.
Climate change just isn't the biggest issue facing humanity. We're facing, literally right now, a global wave of famine, war and suffering kicked off by the poorly-advised COVID response. All the problems that climate change might cause are solved if we can just keep average primary energy/capita ratios high enough - and if that drops, our lifestyles are doomed regardless. There is a reason the environmentalists struggle to gain traction on this issue. It isn't ignorance on the part of the people they are talking to.
Also: Climate change is not abstract, and we can already attribute individual catastrophes with actual costs (both economic and in human lives) to it. Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem.
If you are a conservative and don't like migration, climate change should be your number 1 topic right now. Because guess what.
If someone came around and tried this in the field of math: "guys, I think linear algebra doesn't work" or in the field of basic physics: "guys, I think I inventend the perpetuum mobile", they would be either just ignored, corrected or laughed out of the room. Not because mathematicians or physicists are arrogant, but because what they say is so obviously wrong that it can be discarded as wrong by someone who finished high school and read on the topic once.
At the danger of sounding condescending, but I believe at a certain degree of wrongness the burden to inform oneself is on the person being wrong and not on the room around them. I happily point out that they are wrong and maybe even why they are wrong, but it is not my job to do the reading for them.
Although in some parts of the world the basic findings of climate science is still wrongly being seen as a matter of opinion, there are things in this world which don't care about ones political views – and if these things mean potentially mean the end of humanity my otherwise ever-present humour will dry up and the otherwise ever-present slack I will give people who are uninformed (who isn't at some topics) will not be given. If your reaction to someone saying a true thing in a bad tone is to "reciprocally" go and believe the wrong thing out of spite, I truly cannot help you.
I don’t think the covid response initiated it, only made it worse/more inescapable to the west.