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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"I feel like our country is extremely unprepared for what climate change is going to mean for everyone in a decade or two."

I mean, this water issue has almost nothing to do with climate change. Groundwater depletion is a huge concern on the great plains and other areas too. This is what happens when you have so many people and need to support their preferences (eg watering commodity crops instead of growing crops that thrive in dry areas, overpopulation in arid regions, etc).

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Overpopulation is the fundamental root cause of climate change, and I'm tired of opinion columnists and most scientists denying it or deflecting. Malthus was right. He was only too early for his time. Technology and the Haber-Bosch process gave us more time. But the inevitable can't be delayed forever.

No, we shouldn't try to support 8 billion people with the standard of living of Botswana. It would be much better for everyone involved to have 100 million people with an American/Western standard of living. Quality over quantity.

I assume you're planning to be one of the 100k?

Yes.

Not going to elaborate on the why or how because I've spent enough time on the Internet to know where these arguments lead.

Yes, I plan to be one of the survivors.

So you want to kill the rest of us?

Reducing population doesn't necessarily mean eliminating existing people. It just means reproducing at slightly less than the normal death rate.

Ahhh, I see. What you mean is that both you and your kids are going to work, underpaid, in elderly care. Underpaid, because the cost of what you do will have to be extracted from the working population, which won't include the elderly, and obviously taxes over 50% ... well a proportion over 50% can't double. The elderly population will more than double though. So the pay for people working in elderly care will have to go down, yet more people will have to do it and they'll have to care for a more elderly per worker.

The problem is that there are very large consequences to anything but the smallest of population changes for those who remain.

Also: Global warming (or at least the co2 increase) WILL stop before 2100 for the simple reason we'll run out of oil. I mean peak oil, we can fight about when it will happen, but before 2100 economically viable oil will be gone in practically every scenario. So why bother?

Wow. That is a scary view. Who should we eliminate then? I really hope climate genocide won’t become a thing…

We don’t have to kill anyone, we just have to stop having >2 kids, and there is a lot of evidence that the best way to do this is to improve economic opportunity and education for women and girls in developing nations.

That might be a technically correct approach for the population growth if we ignore natual constraints. However, it fails if we take a larger perspective in the analysis. We see that the developed world produces more climate impact and has higher resource consumption. Shifting the developing world to a similar lifestyle is not possible due to constrained resources. If anything, in the short term it would lead to additonal resource depletion and more climate impact before we could realize any of the population reduction.

There are ways of improving economic opportunity without shifting to a grossly consumerist lifestyle. But even if there weren’t, it would be better to downscale the population through voluntary means even if it meant a climate hit. What’s the alternative? Birth rates stay high right up to the point of famine?

"There are ways of improving economic opportunity without shifting to a grossly consumerist lifestyle."

Such as?

The only places with famine are the ones that are not wealthy/developed. Of course, it's not in absolute terms but rather relative terms since it's about who can bid the highest for the resources that are on the open market. The current population trajectory is that were already slated to peak in the next 50 years. The first real question is how fast can we decrease without major issues. The second is what is the sustainable population level that the earth can support with the modern high consumption lifestyle.

But nobody really talks about this. In fact, we hear more from people like Musk about the population decline issue. That's rather local thinking. It's more of a population distribution issue than a deportation issue.

We can either reduce our birthrate or let wars over resources do the culling.

I daresay China and the other nations would disagree with your assessment as to where the axe should fall. Your list--and I believe all such lists--has a strong subjective bias. I have no doubt there is a user on Tencent and a user on VK who have the US and Western Europe as candidates.

I do suspect AI can provide a future Alexander with a tool to solve such a Gordian knot. ML controlling chaotic systems such as double or triple pendulums demonstrates how intrinsically unstable systems can be managed. Imagine the power and ability of 8 billion coordinated people.

Scary indeed. This perspective is known as ecofascism, and should rightly be rejected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism

I just want to let you know, some of us are upvoting you.

Your idea of 100e6 people with a high standard of living is a fantasy.

High standards of living are a product of billions of people, many in much lower standards of living. The regression to progress of having much fewer people is another huge problem.

And it's a very weirdly urgent take when demographic collapse is going to handle a lot of this for us anyway.

> No, we shouldn't try to support 8 billion people with the standard of living of Botswana. It would be much better for everyone involved to have 100 million people with an American/Western standard of living. Quality over quantity.

I was curious how big a population could be supported at the per capita emissions of various countries and still be net zero. What I mean by "net zero" is the the atmospheric CO2 level would stay at current levels.

Here's a table of populations (in millions) that would be net zero at the per capita emissions of various countries.

    50 Qatar
   115 Australia
   130 United States
   170 South Korea
   211 Germany
   240 Norway
   270 China
   360 United Kingdom
   390 France
   560 Mexico
   670 Botswana
  1020 Fiji
  1050 India
  1980 Honduras
  3030 Laos
  4260 Bangladesh
  4900 Cambodia
  6100 Kenya
  6900 Nepal
  7700 Zambia

I'm getting country per capita emissions from [1] and am assuming 2 billion tonnes for net zero based on this article [2] which says that's how much CO2 is currently being removed from the atmosphere per year.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

[2] https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/01/19/scientists-calcula...

I'm curious, do the emissions numbers account for imports/exports?

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