There’s actually more than enough resources to go around, but enormous amounts are lost to waste, corruption, inequality and greed. The world isn’t actually overpopulated, but over-urbanized. If it was made more feasible for people to live in the districts, more decentralised and with less waste of resources, human society would look very different.
Comment on I have an idea ☝️
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Declining birthrates will save the planet. There’s already more people than we can sustainability support.
mastertigurius@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Why that direction? Intuitively I’d imagine stuffing the humans into cities would allow more mass transit, fewer cars, more economies of scale, and more area left over for nature. So more like Singapore, less like Texas.
Has anyone ever done scientific research on this question?
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
We produce enough food now, but not sustainably. Fertilizers and pesticides are destroying ecosystems.
TWeaK@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
We could also all sleep together in big rooms, like stadiums, to save heat and power elsewhere. And it won’t turn into that orgy scene at the end of that Matrix movie, not unless Carol wants it to.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
We don’t have to invite Carol.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
“In my perfect ideal world, that we have no path to achieving, we could sustain our large population indefinitely.”
zbyte64@awful.systems 7 hours ago
Urban centers have less waste or CO2 per capita than their rural or suburban counterparts. The problem is our pursuit of ever increasing profits is extremely wasteful but is currently how states gain influence.
marcos@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It looks like the world can support the current population. Barely.
But yeah, low birth rate is not something that must be solved right now. And it will solve itself eventually. We should be working into making people comfortable, but if people think their current situation isn’t good enough to have children, just shut the fuck up and let them be.
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
Hard to prove, but even the idea that the world can barely support the current population is likely just propaganda trying to reinforce a scarcity mindset.
We could probably pack nearly everyone in the entire world in to an area the size of the United Kingdom, and most could be living better lives than they do now. Population Density comparable to New York City would get you around 7 billion people. Obviously, we can do better than that, but just trying to put it into perspective.
Even for agriculture, you could support the current population with what we’ve got and a lot more if that was your priority. There are dramatic gains to be made by reducing or eliminating meat and unless we made some new unfortunate discoveries that would 100% get you there, but you might not even have to. Might have to focus on prioritizing fertile land for agriculture but having everyone in the world eat like an average american would likely be doable at current levels if we actually wanted to prioritize that.
ynthrepic@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Not actually true, unless your means of supporting people includes provisions for the extravagances of carbon-based energy and huge amounts of inefficiency everywhere in the supply chain.
If we want to carry on with capitalism as we know it now, yes. And you know it’s going to be the elderly, sick, disabled, among the work class population that need to go first. You know, those who can’t be forced to work. It’s not the poor working class populations wealthy right-wing policies are asking to have more babies.
The world is already on track for around 10 billion people anyway, because there are already enough young people I’m developing nations who we expect to have families of their own in the next few decades.
So good thing we could carry that many people sustainably if we get our shit together.
someguy3@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
“But line must go up.”
vivalapivo@lemmy.today 12 hours ago
I know that you are just parroting dangerous ideas, but you need to stop that
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
We CAN sustain everybody we have now. It’s just billionaires have decided it’s more profitable to let a huge section of society suffer. The more suffering for us, the more profit for them. But you have to balance it, so it doesn’t lead to revolt.
Thats what ends suffering. Not decreased birthrates, but instead death and revolt of those holding back food and shelter from those that need it, so they can raise prices on unsold units.
someguy3@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Not so sure, we are pulling resources out of the earth at a ridiculous rate. Even with green energy we are still reliant on mining for everything. Goods, fertilizer, the stuff for solar panels. We’re going to run out of easy to access stuff sooner or later.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
Degrowth is only an option after the dismantling Capitalism. We are pulling unreasonable and unsustainable amounts of resources from the earth. This should be ended but that cannot be done while those resources are owned by capitalists who must by the nature of capitalism expand that extraction infinitely. If we want sustainability through the reduction of wasteful and unnecessary use of resources we need a system that is not predicated on infinite growth in a finite system.
sunstoned@lemmus.org 5 hours ago
So you’re saying mine the moon?
BorgDrone@feddit.nl 11 hours ago
Even if we could (which I doubt) is it even worth it living on a planet that’s this crowded?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
That depends where you live. I wouldn’t want to live in India, which is crowded as hell. But Half of Canada is basically empty. Half of Australia is basically empty. Some of the states in the USA are basically empty. The majority of russia is empty.
Space isn’t the issue.
TheBat@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Those places are empty because it is not easy to live there. And we should leave those places alone anyway.
caurvo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Australia and Canada are most uninhabited because there’s a lot of uninhabitable land. I do agree that a lot of land use isn’t efficient, but there is also generally a reason people don’t live in central Australia.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
The world really is not all that crowded, it only feels that way because our land use is inefficient
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
Yes? Have you ever been to Tokyo, Shanghai, any of the like 100 cities >10m in China?
They’re quite nice.
anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
More scientists and inventors, more philosophers and artists, more people that share your niche hobby…
The only people who have a problem with that, are hipsters or just like dieing a preventable death.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
We could feed everyone now, but not sustainably. To produce the amount of food we do now, we need fertilizers made from limited resources like oil and pesticides/fungicides that destroy the ecosystem.If the current agriculture section of the world completely moved to sustainable practices next year there wouldn’t be enough food to support half of the human population.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
We can sustain everybody on Earth right now if we all eat beans and rice, give up all meat, stop plane travel, and limit your commutes to ones you can do without a personal car. Even if we get rid of billionaires, the rest of western life is unsustainable at this population.
If you are reading this message on a smart phone, it’s already too late, you don’t meet this criteria. The only solution for us to sustain your lifestyle is to reduce the population.
zbyte64@awful.systems 7 hours ago
That’s all hard to do when billionaires are the ones structuring society. The point is we don’t get to choose corrective societal actions unless it is an exercise of individual privilege. I would have loved to take the train to visit relatives, but it literally is not an option.