A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I think the point is that we already live in a post-scarcity world, or rather in a manufactured-scarcity world
Yes! Cover the earth in medium-density mixed-zoning tram neighborhoods! Anyone who doesn’t want to give the entire planet to one species is Malthusian!
Overpopulation and billionaires can be part of the problem at the same time. We can produce so much resources because of the capitalist approach of cutting corners and going cheap at the expense of environment. More ethical ways of producing stuff would mean significantly less than what we have now which would require less population. Moreover it is funny to call this the ecofascist rhetoric because implementation of the idea presented in the OP would require forced displacement of billions of people living in cities to rural areas at best, to deserts and tundras at worst.
Also people like Elon who thinks they should distribute their sperm all around the world is at the intersection. So no matter which way one chooses they are always the problem so maybe we can agree to start with them and see if it gets better.
It's ecofascism when people pin it on humanity in general and not capitalism. The solution is changing our economic system to one that would allow us to live alongside nature rather than destroying it, and not to simply kill off a chunk of the population to address "overpopulation".
100% capitalism is the main source. And definitely not kill but engrave in people's minds that trying to have five children is selfish. If your action is the kind of action "if everyone does it, it is a big problem but because they don't I can do it" then there is a very good chance that it is a selfish behaviour. Reducing population will I think transform capitalist economy too. Less work force means higher demand for it and therefore companies will eventually have to pay higher wages. Less population means less demand for products and therefore capitalistic way of "cutting corners" mode of mass production will likely be not as profitable. Sure therewill always be people trying to capitalize on new means of production and yeah I also agree that changing the economic system will be required to prevent. But even changing the economic system will be easier with less population.
The more disenfranchised workers the more power they have and the easier it would be to replace the system.
I see no memes, just truth bombs.
What in the fuck is an ecofascist?
Is there some alternate universe you people come from where overexploitation of arable topsoil doesnt happen?
ecofascism is an authoritarian approach to addressing global climate change. they believe that poor people are a strain upon the land and that left to their own devices humanity would destroy the planet out of spite.
often, they ignore the top heavy causes of climate change. i can elaborate now but i need to go to the store
Rich people are a bigger strain on the land. Get rid of them first.
Do enlighten us when you've done your shopping.
okay. so. ecofascism ignores, or is ignorant of, the role that indigenous people played maintaining ecosystems and the overall climate of this world. they frame the tragedy of the commons as that a commonly shared resource will be overutilized by the community leading to the degredation and loss of that resource. given this, they believe that a top level force is required to protect that resource.
the flaw with this framing is that anthropologically, there is no evidence that the tragedy of the commons works this way. we have much more evidence of an ownership class overexploiting a resource than we do collaborative communities. the people, left to their own devices, will largely find solutions that will best fit all their needs, where as an ecofascist route will generally only allow the person commanding the economy to assess needs and they will do so with their set of biases and blindspots, leading to things like the famines of the 5 year plans and the great leap forward
Essentially - people who claim overpopulation is killing the planet, therefore we need to remove the undesirables to fix it. I wouldn't argue it's the most common position.
Overexploitation is killing the planet. We used to have millions of buffalo across America farting up the atmosphere with zero issue for tens of thousands of years. Less than 200 years of industrial scale beef exploitation later and suddenly cow farts are destroying the atmosphere. Is is the cows fault for farting? Or is it the humans fault for breeding 500 million cows?
Cheap Chosen Slavery?
If everything about Human society was completely different we could live sustainably on the planet. Great insight.
Overpopulation is not a myth. 36% of the earth's mammalian biomass is Humans, only 5% is wild mammals. 71% of avian life is livestock. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
Half of all "habitable land" (which includes everything except deserts, tundra, salt flats, beaches, or exposed rock) is used for agriculture. Half of all land, for agriculture. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/12/agriculture-habitable-land/
Industrial farming is not sustainable at the current rate and relies on either mined or petrochemical derived ammonia which supplies the nitrogen necessary for protein. Synthetic Ammonia alone feeds half the world population and requires an additional 2% of the world's power to produce.
The global ecoystem is in rapid decline.
I gave up finding appropriate sources halfway when I realized this post will just get removed eventually.
IMO the biggest problem with the post is that it is ignoring that natural world completely.
We can't colonize mars, not because it's far away and hard to get to (although those are problems). The real issue is that we don't really understand our own biosphere enough to build even an imitation one somewhere else. The ISS is orbits so close it's barely out of the atmosphere. It's still well protected by the Earth's magnetic field, and gets regular deliveries of food, water, spare parts, etc. Every time we've tried a closed biosphere (biodome?) on earth, it has failed.
The bigger Earth's population, the shorter the timespan we have before we can realize we screwed up somehow (i.e. overusing artificial fertilizer, emitting too much carbon, etc.) and having to urgently fix it or the whole planet is wrecked. If we had a "planet B" it wouldn't be so urgent. If we knew perfectly how the ecosphere worked, we wouldn't screw up. If we had "save points" and could just load them if we screwed up, then we could run closer to the edge and go back if we messed up. Unfortunately, this is the only planet we have, and we still don't know how it all works. Because of that, we should really run with a much lower population so that when we inevitably screw up there's a buffer to protect us while we adjust.