Climate change activists deserve Trump

Climate change is a red herring. The root problem is overpopulation. Trying to cure the effects of six billion too many people with environmental laws is like fighting leprosy with band aids. The effects of overpopulation can be retarded by a few years, but not halted in their inexorable march toward oblivion of polite civilizations.

There are as many people today suffering abjectly in thirst, starvation, filth, disease and violence than existed on the planet when I was born. And worse than atmospheric destruction is the fact that water tables around the world are being sucked dry and can’t be replenished by rainfall, even if people wised up, which of course they can’t, because of inferior intellect on average coupled with an overweening bias for babies.

I am not a hypocrite, like Al Gore, because I walked the walk. My wife and I decided not to have children, because we could not countenance being part of the problem, even symbolically, since one family can’t make a measurable difference; people would have to be smarter, educated, and responsible at large. I calculated that by not having children, over three generations, starting with mine, I will have used up resources and polluted 1/16th as much as a couple whelping two children, with their progeny following numerical suit, and 1/22nd as much as a couple with three. Compare that against a numbskull with three kids recycling cans, driving a Prius instead of a Hummer, and teaching his children not to run hot water more than necessary.

DISCLAIMER: Of course, speaking hypothetically, at some point societies would have to permit some children to be produced. But by that time they could be selected for adequate intellect.

I completely agree. Question is, how do we fix it? Plague? Famine? Giant asteroid from outer space? I vote for asteroid.

You’re probably joking here (since a large impact would obviously harm the environment far, far more than humans ever could), but this sort of misanthropic attitude is relatively common, I find, among hard-core environmentalists. They’re missing an obvious point, IMO – the universe can and will do nigh-infinitely more damage to Earth and Earth life than humans ever could even in the worst case scenario… and humans are the only chance Earth life could have to avoid such doom (with technology to divert impact events and the like).

We humans, so far, have been pretty bad for the environment, but we could also be the best thing to ever happen to Earth-life if we get our shit together.

There is plenty of room on the planet for 6-billion people. They just give the appearance of too many by being squeezed into a few urban spaces.

Ethiopia has 100-million people, but only one city larger than Tallahassee or Saginaw. That one-third equivalent of the US population, leaves a very light footprint.

One tenth of the world’s inhabitants are responsible for the half the consumption of the planet’s resources. The world is overpopulated by you and the rest of that rich first billion, not the other five billion that so many are keen to blame.

I chose not to have any kids, so I drive a F250 diesel truck to make up for it.

Looking at plots of global temperature change (see “hockey stick graph”), it appears things really started to take off around 1900, at which point the world’s population was around 1.5 billion. This would imply that things might revert if we culled the global population down to 1.5B or so.

However, per-capita CO2 emissions are about 4X higher now than they were 100 years ago. So instead of 1.5B, if you want 1900-level global CO2 emissions with 2000-level industrialization, the global population will have to be dialed back to less than 400 million. ISTM modern civilization will collapse if 17 out of 18 people are eliminated, unless it’s done very, very gradually - much slower than climate change will happen.

It’s a little difficult to determine the best place for this, but as the OP is a mild rant that (directly, at least) neither seeks opinion nor debate, I’m shipping it off to the Pit. This may change down the road.

What a load of self-righteous nonsense. [Reasoned response deleted since the OP is such a random jumble of strawmen.]

The secret to overpopulation is universal TV and the pill. Once you get a generation or 2 into having birth control and something else to do , fertility generally drops to less than replacement level.

All we need is an efficient way to turn babies into fuel. Kill birds with one stone!

Plain truth is always viewed as a rant by deniers. I’ll make a college try to stay off this forum.

Geniuses are so undervalued these days. Why wouldn’t people want to live in an authoritarian utopia where they were told how many children they could have (usually zero)? What’s not to love about that? It would be so easy to implant this on a world-wide basis, too!!

Good idea. It’ll give you some free time to work off your Freshman 15.

The OP has stated the real “Inconvenient Truth”. Sure, there are things we can do to prolong the inevitable, and increase the human population density, but no matter what we do, increasing the human population density will change the environment as even a zero carbon footprint will result in a decrease in the biodiversity if the human population continues to grow.

Well, education (especially education of women) & increased prosperity do tend to lower birth rates. Sex education & availability of contraception are also useful.

Not that we shouldn’t continue the fight against climate change. Even people with zero offspring can do their part–beyond not reproducing.

The OP sounds like he or she would just prefer those brown people just all suddenly die.* Nobody* deserves Trump.

I’ve long viewed environmentalists who don’t preach population reduction as the number one priority to be either ignorant, liars, or stupid. And to take issue with the idea that the Earth can support 7 billion people, sure it can. If we ration, if we fertilize the land to death, if we do away with most meat eating, we can probably do a few billion more. But why live counting every calorie so it doesn’t go to waste? Watching every drop of water like were walking through a desert. Eventually we would reach a point where we couldn’t support anymore people. Lets end the growth and begin to reduce now while we can still enjoy life. Call me selfish, but I like taking a long shower every morning. I like the idea of individual transportation instead of being stuck in mass transit with multitudes of people who weren’t allowed to shower to conserve water. The world doesn’t need more than 2 billion people with automation and computers doing most of the grunt work anyways.

Holodecks. Make holodecks (or robot/Westworld equivalents) inexpensive and available to all, and population growth will plummet.

Make every guy wear a Trump mask, and every woman wear a Hillary mask. That should take care of the population problem.

I said I would try to stop posting here (but never trust a Prankster) when I thought the moderator was going to deep six my OP. But it’s still here, so, so am I.

I’m not trying to cause trouble, nor am I advocating anything, except honesty, and in this case, acknowledgement of the elephant in the room. No I don’t think brown people should be killed. And I realize that the developed countries are causing most of the environmental issues. My humble opinion is that honesty is all we have, and being honest is all we can do – except for enacting little, temporary band aid ameliorations, as I said. I am content to live and die, like everybody else, at least at this point in scientific advancement, because when I am gone I figure the universe will also end (a debatable, philosophical trope, of course), and thus the problems I see in it. And even in the midst of all the horror and ugliness, there are pretty girls, fine wine, great dinners and fun stuff to do, so life is good.

I wonder if the OP is living in a studio apartment … because if they are living in a two-bedroom place … then they’re not conserving building materials over a two child family … nor are they conserving energy over a two child family … they have a car, well, that’s the same as a two child family …

My point is that the “half as many people = half the environmental impact” relies on the childless couple living at the same standard as the two child family … which is unusual … people with twice the money in hand will live at a higher standard of living … thus have a higher “footprint” on the environment …

The exception to this is food consumption, and perhaps more importantly to the global warming issues, the transporting of this food from the farms to the cities … my understanding is that most of the food grown in Iowa is for animals … pigs and cows … which is horribly inefficient … so again the two child family will not be eating as much meat … will the childless couple also reduce their meat consumption?

It’s not that environmentalists ignore the problems of overpopulation … just that the solutions are not very cool or liberal … we could certainly go back to constant warfare … and shut down all the health care facilities … stop these vaccination programs … remove all the social safety nets …

Indeed, just returning small pox into the environment would take out a very large percentage of the human population in short order … lots of people born in the last 50 years will be genetically susceptible to that pathogen …

But again, this only works if these childless couple live as frugally as a two child family … and that’s not really basic human nature … people are going to exploit their available resources …