# Climate change activists deserve Trump **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 8, 2016, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198 "2016-12-08T12:44:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/61 "2016-12-09T04:13:23Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > I completely agree. Question is, how do we fix it? Plague? Famine? Giant asteroid from outer space? I vote for asteroid. Global thermonuclear war, followed by a zombie apocalypse. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/62 "2016-12-10T00:31:33Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > There were more examples on the link, mind you, I do know about their anti abortion; but several Republicans are also against contraception. And as I pointed, many are also climate change deniers. Anthony Watts is BTW a registered republican and as one of the main climate change deniers out there his position carries a lot of weight among the anti science community. And Paul R. Ehrlich, who is an ardent AGW believer, claimed that overpopulation was going to lead to mass starvation in the U.S. in the 1970s. Ehrlich is a die hard lefty: > [@](#): > > The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate … [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich). And John Holdren, you might know of him as he works for President Obama and all, worked with Ehrlich. Holdren stated back in 1969: > [@](#): > > if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come. [Linky](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1294858). Many Democrats are fear mongering, disaster conspirators. Slee ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/63 "2016-12-10T10:14:05Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > And Paul R. Ehrlich, who is an ardent AGW believer, claimed that overpopulation was going to lead to mass starvation in the U.S. in the 1970s. Ehrlich is a die hard lefty: > > [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich). > > And John Holdren, you might know of him as he works for President Obama and all, worked with Ehrlich. Holdren stated back in 1969: > > [Linky](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1294858). > > Many Democrats are fear mongering, disaster conspirators. > > Slee And thank you for demonstrating to all that you do not pay any attention, several times before in other threads I have reported on how Paul R. Ehrlich and other Malthusians are loopy. Your point also does not mean much seeing that we **are** talking about how it is a myth that AGW people that propose solutions to the issue do not talk also about family planning/population control. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/64 "2016-12-10T11:48:25Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > … 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. this is important of course as the Left environmentalism is filled with the misanthropy, but in fact the only reason for thehumans to deeply care about the climate and the enviornmental changes is that it will be bad for us from our point of view. For the planet and life, we are just a momentary blip that is less damaging than the meteriod strikes that have caused - or the mega volcananoes, etc. > [@jtur88](#): > > 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. . this is not a fully correct observation, the intensive traditional agriculture is more stressing for the fragile soils, more damaging, although the Left likes to romanticise the “small holder farmer” long term stress on productivity of the land in Sub saharan africa from the over-usage of the fragile and the marginal land for the subsistence or the near subsistence farming is a serious problem and is not a light foot print as it is indeed a driver of the loss of the vegetation and even the desertification or the long term (for people ‘permanent’) degradation of the soil for productive use. one of the worst things I see in the African context is these soi-disant development people romanticising the small farmers and completely ignoring the economic history of every well developed region in this area. > [@Mijin](#): > > More seriously, no I don’t think overpopulation is the issue per se. World population will stabilize as regions such as Africa go through the same demographic transition we’ve been through in the West. > The problem is that the Western way of life is not sustainable, not without technological leaps, for that many people. But hey let’s do nothing and blame others for wanting a life like ours, eh? then the key is to have the technological progress. [The demographic transition of course is indeed happening, even in the sub Saharan africa,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate) although it is can be accelerated, but it is not surprising to see it is in the worst places economically that the birth rate is highest. > [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > It’s not about how many people you can squeeze into a phone booth. The earth is far from a phone booth. > [@](#): > > It’s the fact that most of the non-replenishable water is already sucked up, something like 90% of the fish are gone out of the oceans, many of the remaining strangled with plastic, and so many other species are disappearing, etcetera. You have a strange lack grasp of actual facts. This above is exageration and fiction. It is quite true the global fish stocks are stressed and it is a concern for the human edible fishes, but it is in no way true “90% of the fish are gone out of the oceans”, [as the FAO summary data show clearly. [a PDF]](http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pdf) - if this were true the eating of fish would be the unattainable luxury… Similar can be said on the issue of the water, where there is real problems in certain geographic areas but is not true as this statement is made. of course the real problems are indeed very serious problems, but gross exaggeration only turns them into unsolvable scare stories. > [@](#): > > But the difference between what the planet looks like now versus in the fifties and early sixties, when I came of age to appreciate things, like Route 66 being two-lane and sometimes devoid of traffic as I trundled in A VW bug across a beautiful, boundless country in search of primal adventure, is huge. So you make a judgement on your nostalgic memory of a personal experience, the old man cursing against change and the passing of the golden age of his memories of the youth… it is an eternal feature of the human race. This is not any thing more sophisticated than the misanthropy of the old-man nostalgic against change. > [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#): > > Not even close to true. > > [During the first half of the last century, the growth of the world population caused the absolute number of poor people in the world to increase, even though the share of people in poverty was going down. After around 1970, the decrease in poverty rates became so steep that the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty started falling as well. This trend of decreasing poverty – both in absolute numbers and as a share of the world population – has been a constant during the last three decades.](https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/) It is it is clear the aesthetic nostalgic statement and not a thing informed by the actual data. > [@](#): > > As for the hand-wringing over water, it is cruel and incorrect to blame the problem on overpopulation: [the vast majority don’t have access to enough water to waste it](http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/facts-and-figures/en/)–that’s the fault of the privileged. And it’s actually a pretty solvable problem. Stop the privatization of water resources, change the Western hemisphere’s diet a little, invest in desalinization . What? There is one thing clear, the under pricing of the cost of the water and the collective over extraction of the irrigation waters from the slow replenishing aquifers. The low pricing, usually through the badly conceived governmental schemes leads to wasteful and damaging (the notable is the soil salinization). this has not a thing to do with “privatization” and in many places the privatization could in fact help greatly as a solution - but not in all of course. the water of aquifers is the classic problem of the tragedy of the commons. the water desalinization unless there is some **low cost** economically efficient methodology with renewable energy is completely irrelevant to the problem of the water stress, for it has no scale to address it. The desalinization is a solution for the direct human consumption and for the niche high value agriculture. > [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > Regarding my statement that more people today are living under abject conditions than there were people on the planet when I was born. > … > There are tons of data available about this subject, and a person can interpret it anyway he wants to. There are indeed the [tons of data,](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW) data which you ignore or know nothing of in favor of the aesthetic judgement of nostalgia. Interpret anyway he wants seems to mean “make things up.” > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > By simple math, there are ~4.9 billion people today who live WITH sanitation, more than twice the number of people who were alive when you were born. > > Incidentally, when you were born, there was a massive global war going on - the most destructive in history - and it has not (yet) been repeated, which I take as a positive sign. Exactly and when he was living in his golden age memories, it was the peak time of the rapid growth. ---
**Author:** ![Covert\_Harris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Covert\_Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covert_Harris)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/65 "2016-12-10T17:46:37Z")
There has always been horror and ugliness in the perspective of a human brain which was not itself in the moment pissed off and calling for someone’s head. WWII was indeed horrible, as was the Inquisition, the Holocaust, lynching in America’s south, etcetera, etcetera. I just think the world, when people were not killing other people where one was looking, was just a lot prettier in the fifties. I find the crowding in a lot of areas today to be ugly. But aesthetic nostalgia has nothing to do with my consideration that civilization will be in much worse shape when the water gets sucked down to the point of widespread stress. And I feel that almost everybody is either stupid, ignorant, or in denial about the almost certain untoward future effects of overpopulation (yes mostly by the elite 15%). I don’t care if a lot of people here don’t agree with that. That’s the last thing I am going to say about it, unless someone says something particularly fetching that I feel I must respond to. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/66 "2016-12-10T17:50:36Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > Machine, I didn’t see this before I just responded with the same point. It is so refreshing that you can see this. I don’t know why it is so hard for others, other than the urge to have babies is so strong that it blinds people. My wife says that’s the only purpose of mankind, so I should quit carping about it. > > It’s interesting, though, that the urge to have children is social, and not biological, while biological evolution causes people to assemble in societal groups for survival, so it’s related. My wife wanted children when we were first married, and our disagreement about it caused a temporary separation. We reunited when she agreed to give it a couple of years before revisiting the question. She completely lost the itch, when not scratched for two years, and now thanks her lucky stars we never had any. You sound pretty misanthropic. Well the good thing is billions of others don’t have that self hate. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/67 "2016-12-10T17:56:16Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > There has always been horror and ugliness in the perspective of a human brain which was not itself in the moment pissed off and calling for someone’s head. WWII was indeed horrible, as was the Inquisition, the Holocaust, lynching in America’s south, etcetera, etcetera. > > I just think the world, when people were not killing other people where one was looking, was just a lot prettier in the fifties. I find the crowding in a lot of areas today to be ugly. > > But aesthetic nostalgia has nothing to do with my consideration that civilization will be in much worse shape when the water gets sucked down to the point of widespread stress. And I feel that almost everybody is either stupid, ignorant, or in denial about the almost certain untoward future effects of overpopulation (yes mostly by the elite 15%). I don’t care if a lot of people here don’t agree with that. That’s the last thing I am going to say about it, unless someone says something particularly fetching that I feel I must respond to. What state do you live in? Montana is a good place to escape crowds. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/68 "2016-12-10T18:03:48Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > There has always been horror and ugliness in the perspective of a human brain which was not itself in the moment pissed off and calling for someone’s head. WWII was indeed horrible, as was the Inquisition, the Holocaust, lynching in America’s south, etcetera, etcetera. > > I just think the world, when people were not killing other people where one was looking, was just a lot prettier in the fifties. I find the crowding in a lot of areas today to be ugly. > > But aesthetic nostalgia has nothing to do with my consideration that civilization will be in much worse shape when the water gets sucked down to the point of widespread stress. And I feel that almost everybody is either stupid, ignorant, or in denial about the almost certain untoward future effects of overpopulation (yes mostly by the elite 15%). I don’t care if a lot of people here don’t agree with that. That’s the last thing I am going to say about it, unless someone says something particularly fetching that I feel I must respond to. Like I said, Malthusians are loopy. What should fry your noodle is that one big part why Hitler launched his wars of conquest is that they were mostly based on ignoring how technology and trade (even then) were making the need to seek living space a fallacy. > **[Hitler's Argument for Conquest - Econlib](http://www.econlib.org/archives/2005/03/hitlers_argumen.html)** > > What was Hitler’s argument for attacking other countries? You might think he didn’t have one, but he did. His argument is frankly Malthusian: Our population is growing, and we will run out of food unless we get more land. (My colleague David Levy... > [@](#): > > Linking views you don’t like with Hitler is of course the ultimate political cheap shot. But as an economist, I don’t mind buying cheap, especially if the quality is good. When someone says “There are too many Jews,” we suspect that he wants to kill Jews. Similarly, it turns out that at the root of Hitler’s propensity to kill people was his belief that there are too many people. > > And if you’re tempted to say that Hitler proposed a barbaric solution for a real problem, take a look at how Germany actually did feed its population since 1945: increasing agricultural productivity and increasing exports. The two methods that Hitler dismissed out of hand transformed Germany into one of the richest nations in history. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/69 "2016-12-10T18:04:16Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > I just think the world, when people were not killing other people where one was looking, was just a lot prettier in the fifties. So the nostalgie for your youthful memories. It is not very useful for understanding the world. It is without doubt the case the slums of the ethnic minorities of the americans in the 1950s and as I have read the rivers that ran in the multi-colors from the severe pollution and the ethnic minority americans exposed severely to the lead pollutions would not have so fond memories of this era. > [@](#): > > But aesthetic nostalgia has nothing to do with my consideration that civilization will be in much worse shape when the water gets sucked down to the point of widespread stress… since you show very little command of substantial data, in fact your nostalgia for the youthful golden memories seem to have almost everything to do with the ideas expressed. ---
**Author:** ![Covert\_Harris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Covert\_Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covert_Harris)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/70 "2016-12-10T19:49:31Z")
I hoped I could go back and delete the gratuitous epithets I used in my last response, but I didn’t see any way to edit it. So I apologize, at least. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/71 "2016-12-10T20:33:22Z")
Too late, its already on your permanent record. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198.md?page=3)